A historical survey of women's right to education and work
Educating women in Latin Christendom
In the second century of the Christian era, women taught, disputed, exorcised, healed, even baptised; Tertullian[1] censured in these practices an impudence that must be castigated. 4th century clerics would forbid women to speak or teach in celebrations. At that same time John Chrysostom[2] was fully intent on restricting women's teaching role to the home exclusively. Still, this did not preclude a classical education. His contemporary Jerome'[3]s correspondence with one Laeta on the subject of her daughter's education, shows that he advised she be taught not just useful skills like weaving and sawing, but also reading and writing and the mastery of Latin in order to understand the Bible. However the thoroughgoing education deemed necessary to boys was not perceived as useful to girls.
In the Middle-Ages the Church held a monopoly on education and the mainstay of the education available to girls was dispensed in convents, notably to girls or ladies from the aristocracy and a few nuns. Delving into this issue in her book La femme au temps des cathédrales (1980), historian Régine Pernoud writes that the feudal system provided for the same education for boys and girls. It is the establishment of the new universities that excluded women from the system making academia the preserve of men. Women like Abbess Héloïse[4] , educated to a high degree and teaching classical Greek and Hebrew to her nuns are exceedingly rare. Pernoud's broad survey highlights the major role played by queens and queens regent – and indeed tradeswomen.
Educating women in the early centuries of Islam
South of the Mediterranean, women had been able to hold positions of authority in antiquity, notably in pharaonic Egypt. No equivalent can be found eastwards in the Arabic peninsula. However, the existence at the turn of the 6th and 7th centuries of female poets such as al-Khansa [5]or businesswomen like Khadija[6], the first wife of the Prophet of Islam is well attested in posterior Arabic texts. Yet other authors stress the fact that, before the advent of Islam, the birth of a daughter could be deemed shameful and that some parents buried them alive. Women could also be part of the spoils of war.
The Sunni tradition holds Aisha[7] , one of the Prophet's wives, in the highest regard. She is reported to have discussed political matters with Muhammad who expressly acknowledged her wisdom. She was one of the select few who would pass on the words, stories and deeds of her late husband. She led an army strong of several thousand men and assumed the care of the wounded, a deed cited as an example to follow. Also mentioned among other outstanding female figures, is Sukaina, great-granddaughter of Muhammad noted, besides her intelligence and culture, for refusing to wear the veil – or to submit to a husband. At that same time, The Thousand Nights, a collection of Eastern tales translated from the Persian in the 8th and 9th century, tell of a slave fully conversant with a number of disciplines including sciences, grammar, poetry, mathematics, philosophy, which enables her to discourse with scholars – and of a sultana endowed with considerable authority. In later centuries Quranic schools would, as a rule, be attended by boys. However, in aristocratic circles girls would be taught the rudiments of religious sciences along with their brothers. They may study singing and the composition of mystical verse in the Persian and Ottoman Turkish languages. Persia boasted a few mixed schools, as well as women poets, singers and composers.
