ABSTRACT
The ideological exclusion and the legal constraints placed on women forced them to develop evasive strategies that allowed them to pursue their interests despite ideological and legal limitations. Feminism as a term was coined in the late nineteenth century and was associated with the suffrage movement. The contradiction created by the disenfranchisement of women was eventually resolved by the ideological framework of female inferiority that Athenian thinkers constructed – it both complied with patriarchal principles and justified women’s political exclusion from democracy. Women’s discontent with the problematic ideological basis of their exclusion seems to have troubled Athenian and non-Athenian intellectuals. One strand of the scholarly discourse on the status of women emphasizes women’s inclusion, focusing on their efforts for emancipation and suffrage and attempting to minimize the ideological inferiority imputed to women. Women’s claim for the right to vote became the focus of their struggle for equality by the end of the nineteenth century.
