The personal and economic position of a woman in the Hebrew society depicted in the Old Testament is one of subjection and servitude. She was certainly not equal to men, but rather a chattel and a slave, first to her father and then to her husband. Her main functions as a married woman were to provide for her husband's wants and to bear his children. She had no legal power over him. The Old Testament declared, "Thy desire shall be to thy husband and he shall rule over thee" (Gen. 3:16). The only powers she had were persuasion and deviousness. The Hebrew patriarchs could legally possess several wives, concubines and slaves. Prostitution itself was not forbidden, but usually confined to foreign women. Daughters of Israel were forbidden to become prostitutes, but no penalty was attached to disobedience.

The Old Testament is full of incidents where women have been abandoned, used without pity and generally not consulted. An example is the way Abraham, after being told to do so by his god, drove his own son, together with the concubine who conceived him, out into the desert with only some bread and a bottle of water. He did this because his wife Sarah had produced a son and did not want competition for the inheritance from a half brother (Gen. ch.21).

Bruno Bettelheim in his book "The Children of the Dream" tells us,

"Few religions have been as rejecting of womanhood as the Jewish one. It was a religion that viewed her very femininity as a curse, that condemned her to apartheid in its place of worship, that even forbad her to wear her own hair, and required her to shave it off at marriage".

The Old Testament declared that at childbirth a woman became unclean for thirty-three days if the child was a male but she would be unclean for sixty-six days if the child was a female (Lev.l2:2-5). So the new mother was made unclean on giving birth to another human being, but twice as unclean on giving birth to a female child. The denigration of women started from the first day of their lives.

A menstruating Hebrew woman was declared unclean for seven days. Any thing she touched, any one who touched her, her bed or anything she sat upon, were declared unclean. When her menstruation was over, she had to take two turtles or two young pigeons to the priest for him to "make an atonement for her uncleanness" (Lev.l5:19-33). Let me repeat that. The priest was to make an atonement for her uncleanness. It was as though she had been found guilty of a complicity against her god. But worse than that, guilty of being a woman.

Can you imagine the humiliation of this repeated experience? She is asked to make an atonement for her natural physical and reproductive processes as though they had defiled her in some way. Is it any wonder if she felt subdued and a lesser human being than her husband? The marvel is that some women rose above those demeaning religious practices and asserted themselves. What a cruel putdown the Old Testament laws placed on mothers and women in general.

The attitude of Christian dogma toward women seems to have been strongly influenced by ancient Hebrew attitudes and law. We must remember that all the first Christians continued to be orthodox Jews and worshipped in the Temple. The Jewish sacred text of the Old Testament was regarded by both the Jews and the Christians alike as the inspired word of god. The early Christians did not have the New Testament until much later. Is it any wonder that the Christian attitude to women was also demeaning? The English Prayer Book of 1549 provided a rite for "The purification of women", a title obviously taken from the Jewish law for the purification of women after childbirth. Three years later it was changed to "Thanksgiving of women after child birth". The denigration of women is not unique to Christian societies. The important point is that it has occurred and been encouraged by the Christian religion which claimed to interpret the will of a just and loving god.

The Apostle Paul, an orthodox Jew and well versed in the Old Testament law, stated clearly: "The head of the woman is the man" (1 Cor.ll:3). On two occasions he ordered that women were to keep silent in the church. If they wanted to know anything,

they were to ask their husbands when they got home (1 Cor.l3:34- 35). He says "let a woman learn in silence with all subjection. But I suffer not a woman to teach nor to usurp authority over the man but to be in silence" (1 Tim.2:ll-12). Paul stated very clearly "For a man...is the image and glory of God: but the woman is the glory of the man. For the man is not of the woman; but the woman of the man. Neither was the man created for the woman; but the woman for the man" (1 Cor. 11:7-9). And again "Wives, submit yourselves unto your own husbands, as unto the Lord. For the husband is the head of the wife, even as Christ is head of the church: and he is the saviour of the body. Therefore as the church is subject unto Christ, so let the wives be to their own husbands in everything" (Eph. 5:22-24).

This anti-women attitude has come down from the ancient Jewish law to the Christian community and has continued until recent historical times. New Testament dogma credited women with eternal souls equal to men, but persistently denied them equality as living human beings. The dogma has refused to confer on them the most important human recognition of all, independent personal dignity. With a few exceptions, female intelligence has been despised and unacknowledged in almost all professional endeavours until well into the nineteenth century.

Nearly four thousand yeas ago, King Hammurabi of Babylon provided his subjects with a written law which assured the women of a free and dignified position in his kingdom. The Greek philosopher, Plato, thought women could become philosophers and admitted some to his academy. When the Judaeo-Christian religion became popular, the hope of any further recognition of women as equals of men was defeated by the absolute dogma of Jewish law as interpreted by Paul. The position and dignity of women continued to be anchored to quiescent domesticity and child-rearing duties.

Later there was opportunity for a Christian woman to become a nun, and much later a governess of children. The poor and lower-class women have always been low-paid servants of society. And that was about the most a woman could expect to achieve until about a hundred years ago. There have always been exceptions, of course, and a few women have left their mark on civilization. Women have greatly improved their position during the last hundred years, not because of religious dogma but in spite of it and to the extent that the dogma has been ignored.

The Norman conquest had made England a subjugated land, placed under an oppressive feudal law. Feudal attitudes percolated down through all levels of society to married women. Church law insisted that marriage was indissoluble. Within his home the ordinary husband had the legal rights of a feudal lord. Most of the married women had not even the right to the money they earned by their own labour within or outside the home.

Less than one hundred and fifty years ago, the religious marriage ceremony conducted in England asked the bride to say to her bridegroom "with all my earthly goods I thee endow". She moreover had to promise to obey her husband. The husband had absolute legal power to dispose of the personal property and chattels of his wife which by marriage she had assigned to him.

By marriage she placed herself in a very dependent position. Outside the home, her power was very little better than that of a child. Under the most favourable system, the wife was scarcely as free as an unmarried woman. The most unfavourable alliance subjected her to the absolute authority of her husband. He even had the legal right to beat her. We are talking about laws governing marriage. In family relationships love and real devotion also prevailed on many occasions. In Britain, it was not until the Married Women's Property Act of 1882 that a wife could acquire, hold and dispose of any real and personal property in the same manner as a single woman. Even today, in the marriage ceremony, there is a lingering ritual to remind us of the power-lessness women experienced until recent times. The priest will ask "Who giveth this woman away?" Ritual still insists that the father can give his daughter away as though she was a chattel belonging to someone else other than herself. In America and Europe, marriage laws may have been worded differently but they followed much the same general pattern of a demeaning Judaeo-Christian attitude toward women.

Only in comparatively recent times have women emerged from the complex legal disabilities which have restricted them for many centuries. In Britain, three landmarks stand out: The Married Women's Property Act of 1882 referred to in the last paragraph; The Representation of the People Act 1918, allowed women parliamentary election; and the Sex Disqualification (Removal) Act 1919, opened many professional avenues to women which had been closed to them before.

Despite clerical opposition, a law was passed in England in 1880 providing secondary school education for girls. In the eighteenth century a number of books appeared calling for better treatment of women. An example is a book by Mary Wollstonecraft, "A Vindication of the Rights of Women" (1792). The struggle for women to get an education has been much the same in Europe and America. University education was largely denied women until well into the nineteenth century.

In France, Napoleon wanted women who believe ... not women who reason. After the last world war, in spite of the great loss of men in battle, German women comprised only a quarter to a third of university students. In England as late as the year 1948-9, university women numbered only 20,005 while men numbered 80,996. In America in 1852 Antioch College, Yellow Springs, Ohio, gave women equal opportunities with men "in the same studies and classes, and by the same instructors". The university of Michigan admitted women in 1870. And so the practice of including women in all professional endeavours increased. In America in 1900 there were 94 law schools with 151 women and 12,365 men students. By 1950, there were only 421 degrees in law won by women and 13,891 by men.

At last, the female half of our population is slowly, with many exceptions, becoming a full and equal partner with its male counterpart. Perhaps the transition would have been much faster if the Apostlle Paul had not stated his personal prejudices against women. Women are often seen in the Old Testament as inferior to men and in need of control by both men and god. Perhaps the lot of women would have been a happier one if Christianity had not been an offshoot of a women-denigrating religion with ideas of uncleanness and the superiority of men.

Certainly the Christian dogma has not been helpful to women. Society has become more liberated from religious constraints since the Reformation and the cause and aspirations of women have been acknowledged. Absolute religious dogma could be regarded as one of the main causes which brought about the Dark Ages by restricting freedom of thought and expression. There was a huge gap in time between the free-thinking Greek philosophers and the Renaissance. Only when it occurred were people able to think freely again without fear. If the philosophies of the Greeks had continued to develop instead of being impaired by the united power of hungry religious dogmatists and politicians, perhaps the world would have been a happier place. For too long, power-hungry men have been afraid of the challenge of the other half of our society.

A highly respected American psychologist. Dr. Erich Fromm, wrote a book entitled "The Fear of Freedom". In it he explains that freedom brings responsibility. Many are more comfortable living in a restricted environment where someone else makes all the decisions, rather than take responsibility for themselves. Many women continue to live in their own familiar and restricted family prison. They have not yet got used to the power and responsibility of freedom. But their numbers are rapidly decreasing. More and more modern women, particularly young women, are enjoying self determination. They are not less feminine, but they are more exciting to live with. The marriage relationship is changing from one of submissive support by the women to one of a partnership of equals. Mutual interests in addition to home and children are becoming important. Freedom brings trust, adventure, personal dignity and responsibility. It opens the door to self expression and confidence.

There is an exciting future for women. Napoleon can have his women who believe but do not reason. The modern man is going to find, in the future, that his woman partner does think, and instead of implicitly believing her husband, she will want to make an intelligent contribution to an equal relationship. She will live with her man, not because she is bound to him by a contract, but because she enjoys living with him, loving him and being loved by him.