By Abby E. Lagemann, PhD, Genesis Women’s Shelter & Support
In honor of Women’s Equality Day—a day that marks the anniversary of the certification of the 19th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution in 1920—we commemorate the suffragettes’ hard-fought victory for women’s political rights and celebrate the critical steps toward gender equality made in the century since. But even as we hail the achievements of our heroines (and the men who supported them), we also acknowledge that our work is far from over. The reality is that in addition to persistent disparities in pay, employment opportunities, and a host of other gender-related societal inequities, women continue to be the targets of physical and sexual violence because of our gender. And until women are equally as safe as our counterparts—under the law, at our jobs, on the street, and in our homes—we have not achieved true gender equality.
Of course, these issues are neither novel nor unique to our society; they are rooted in a long history of physical assumptions, cultural beliefs, and legal precedents that span nations, peoples, and time. For millennia, laws, religions, established gender roles, cultural ideals, and philosophies about the expressions of femininity and masculinity have put women across the globe at a distinct disadvantage. Throughout much of human history, women have been believed to be intellectually and physically inferior, considered to be property, and assumed to be in all ways “the weaker sex.”
These beliefs have manifested in countless acts of control, discrimination, oppression, and violence against women throughout the ages. For example, in ancient Athens—revered though it is as the origin of democracy—women were not only excluded from participation in government but were even subjected to harsh physical punishment for questioning their husbands about their activities in the Assembly. In fact, any act interpreted as undermining the primacy of male household authority in this deeply patriarchal society was likely considered grounds for physical violence.[1] In ancient Rome, as in many premodern societies, rape was viewed less as a crime against a woman and more as the destruction of a man’s property; an unmarried woman was a valuable commodity as her male guardian negotiated mutually-beneficial marriage contracts with potential husbands, but a woman who had been raped would be seen as damaged goods. For married women, rape by an outsider demonstrated weakness and resulted in shame. For some groups of women, rape was not even possible under Roman law because they were not considered worthy of protection, and marital rape was also a nonexistent concept.[2]
These themes continued into medieval and early modern European societies. Women could rarely own property. A woman’s value was inextricably linked to her sexual integrity, and as the legal property of her father or brother until she was transferred to her husband upon marriage, she was under the legal and physical control of a man throughout her life. In England, men were expected to “discipline” their wives to ensure their proper behavior both inside and outside the home, all of which was part of maintaining the king’s peace. The limits of this “discipline” in the eyes of the law are, however, opaque. While divorce was, for all intents and purposes, forbidden by The Church, the thirteenth century saw the allowance of separation in cases of extreme cruelty—essentially only in cases of obvious and provable life-threatening physical violence. By the sixteenth century, records from the English courts suggest that the bar may have been lowered, but women were still subject to physical violence at the hands of their husbands and there was no clear, standard threshold of legally permissible frequency or severity.[3]
The same assumptions about women’s autonomy, authority, and bodily integrity demonstrated in the examples above shaped the laws and social structures of the United States well into the modern era. Despite the right to vote established by 19th Amendment, women would continue to lack bodily autonomy. The first state to fully criminalize marital rape was Nebraska in 1976, but it was not until 1993 that marital rape was considered a crime in every state. The National Domestic Violence Hotline notes that today there are still states in which legal loopholes and exemptions of spousal rape from criminal prosecution mean that rape by one’s spouse is deemed a lesser crime under the law than rape by a stranger.[4]
Nevertheless, while the story of women’s long, circuitous, and unfinished struggle for equality has been characterized by oppression and violence, it is, most importantly, a story of indomitable resilience. We are still here, and we have not been silenced. Today, as we recognize the remarkable strength of the women who came before us—the women who fought, the women who endured, and the women who succumbed—the best way to honor them is to take up the torch and carry on their cause. Thanks to organizations like the Conference on Crimes Against Women, Genesis Women’s Shelter & Support, and our allies in law enforcement, prosecution, advocacy, victim’s rights, and related fields, none of us has to do it alone.
Citations
[1] Lloyd Llewellyn-Jones, “‘Knocking Her Teeth out with a Stone’: Violence against Women in Ancient Greece” in The Cambridge World History of Violence, ed. Garrett G. Fagan, Linda Fibiger, Mark Hudson, and Matthew Trundle (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2020), 380–99.
[2] Nghiem L. Nguyen, “Roman Rape: An Overview of Roman Rape Laws from the Republican Period to Justinian’s Reign” Michigan Journal of Gender and Law 13 no.1 (2006): 75-112.
[3] Martin Ingram, “Pushing Back Male Violence in Marriage, England 1400-1600” in Fabrizio Titone, ed., Disciplined Dissent in Western Europe, 1200-1600: Political Action Between Submission and Defiance (Turnhout: Brepols, 2022):307-41. Although often referenced in modern discussion of the history of domestic violence, historians have not been able to verify the existence of the “rule of thumb” in English Common Law or Canon Law. Joanne Bailey, “Cruelty and Adultery: Offences Against the Institution of Marriage” in Histories of Crime: Britain 1600-2000, ed. Anne-Marie Kilday and David Nash (New York: Palgrave MacMillan, 2010), 39-59.
[4] “Marital Rape and Domestic Violence,” National Domestic Violence Hotline, accessed August 23, 2026, https://www.thehotline.org/resources/marital-rape-and-domestic-violence/
