ABSTRACT
Related to, and almost as passionate as the quest for racial-ethnic equality has been the twentieth-century quest for sexual equality, spearheaded primarily by militant feminists and secondarily by so-called sexual “deviates”. Rather more typical of ancient realities was the status of women among the early Jews. Although it is a matter of controversy, it appears that Judaism originally held women in somewhat low esteem. At least in the synagogues, women were expected to keep silent, and in Jewish divorce practices, they were practically at men's disposal. In ancient Greece, the fountainhead of democracy, the status of women was generally even lower than their status among Jews and Christians. The Civil Rights Act of 1964 was beyond question the single most important milestone in the quest for female equality since the adoption of the Nineteenth Amendment. It was, however, only a backhanded deference to the women's rights movement, since it was intended primarily to assure equal rights for black US citizens.
