On Tuesday I will conclude my teaching of “The Funeral Oration of Pericles” to my students in Temple’s Intellectual Heritage Program. (IH is a great books program required of all students.) I will spend a significant portion of the class talking about people who are barely mentioned in the text, the women of Athens. I do this because no other female citizens of a political community in all of Western history were more oppressed than the Athenian women.
I wouldn’t be thinking about the women of Athens if not for the feminist Betty Friedan, who died recently.
What Will the Last Quarter of the 20th Century Be Remembered For?
I shouldn’t be, but I remain shocked by how often we overlook the radical character of feminism. Ask yourself what the last quarter of the twentieth century will be remembered for. The collapse of communism? The failure of the Vietnam War? The economic stagnation of the United States? The decline and fall of the Democratic Party? None of these events are as important as the rise of feminism. Only our halting and too slow attempt to create a fair multi-racial political community comes close to the importance of the rise of feminism.
The Radicalism of Feminism
The feminist movement has, in a very short period of time, started the long process of ovecoming two and a half millennia or more of oppression. It has dramatically opened new opportunities for women and, let us not forget, men, too. It has radically changed the way men and women relate to one another and to their children. And, while the feminist movement is often, and wrongly, thought to be primarily a middle class, white movement, it has opened new doors for working class women and women of color as well.
Betty Friedan was an important theoretician of the movement. Her “Feminine Mystique” was perhaps not the deepest expression of feminist thought in the twentieth century—although having taught it more than once, I would suggest that its argument is still challenging and thought provoking. No one doubts that it was a powerful and popular work that struck a chord with many women and men and that helped bring about the feminist movement.
Athens and Its Women
The glory of the democracy of ancient Athens—its combination of freedom and a devotion to the common good—has been a spur to political and moral thought and reform in every age. But, after feminism, we can’t look at it in the same way as we once did. That is not to say that I spend time in class bemoaning the oppression of women in ancient Athens. History is not a matter of handing out badges of moral approval and disapproval to our ancestors. But anyone who still finds mcuh to admire in Athens, like I do, is forced to thnk hard about why women were so excluded from the life of ancient Athens and why and how our circumstances are different. We have to recognize that Athen’s militarism and devotion to the common good came at the expense of women and the family. And, if Athens is still to be any kind of model, we have to show that the oppression of women there was not, and is not, necessary in a political community combines individual and communal freedom as Athens did.