Women, Power, and the Long Road to Equality: Law, Education, and the Glass Ceiling
Women have long been relegated in society to reproductive functions alone. Women inhabit bodies that ensure the survival of humanity and are therefore of supreme value. Paradoxically, this fundamental role has often served as the justification to deny or diminish the many other qualities with which every woman is born—above all, intellectual capacity.
In Roman times, women were considered weak beings, both physically and mentally. As a result, they were placed under permanent male guardianship: first their fathers, then their husbands, and, failing that, a legal guardian. During the reign of Augustus, the ius liberorum was introduced, granting freedom from guardianship to freeborn women with three children and freedwomen with four. Even then, women’s autonomy was conditional and reproductive.
The ius liberorum and conditional female autonomy
Condorcet and the failure of revolutionary equality
Olympe de Gouges and the price of political voice
Seventeen centuries later, women continued to be unequal before the law. The 1789 Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen proclaimed that “men are born and remain free and equal in rights”—women were simply absent.
Some voices, such as Condorcet, challenged this exclusion. In 1790, he published On the Admission of Women to the Right of Citizenship, asking how a revolution founded on equality could deliberately exclude half of humanity from participation in lawmaking. His reasoning was impeccable; his impact, negligible.
The cost of defiance was brutally illustrated by Olympe de Gouges. Her Declaration of the Rights of Woman and of the Citizen (1791) led directly to her execution. “Woman has the right to ascend the scaffold; she must also have the right to ascend the tribune.” Revolutionary rhetoric embraced women’s sacrifices—but never their rights.
Progress toward women’s suffrage was fragmented and often accidental. Full political rights arrived unevenly across countries and only gained universal recognition with the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Education proved even harder to secure. Women were denied intellectual capacity as such—a belief that persists today, from attacks on girls’ education to the instrumental use of religion as a tool of exclusion.
Women’s suffrage: delayed, fragmented, resisted
Leadership in times of crisis: evidence from the 21st century
Despite individual breakthroughs—women who accessed universities due to exceptional social standing—systemic access remained closed for centuries. From medieval scholars in Bologna to pioneers like Dorothea Erxleben, women’s academic presence was the exception, not the rule.
Even today, professional power remains unequally distributed. In law, academia, politics, and corporate leadership, the glass ceiling endures—reinforced by motherhood penalties, structural bias, and persistent exclusion from decision-making spaces.
And yet, history shows something else as well: in moments of crisis—war, revolution, pandemic—women are always on the front line. Evidence increasingly suggests that societies and institutions led by women are not weaker, but more resilient.
Perhaps the future has already begun.
I
muy bueno un saludo!
Gracias, Miguel, considero que la mujer tiene aun que aportar al mundo jurídico, y tanto otros ámbitos profesionales.
Gracias, Catalina, por tan buen artículo. Describes una realidad, una evolución y una lucha que se vive en diferentes oficios y ámbitos. También pasó en el Periodismo, en el cual cuando se convirtió en profesión no podían participar mujeres. Ahora, la mayoría de las estudiantes de Periodismo en España son mujeres (67%), pero en las redacciones y especialmente en los despachos de altos cargos de los medios siguen predominando los hombres. A partir de tu post, saqué algo de polvo a apuntes periodísticos y recordé a algunas de las pioneras: Francisca de Aculodi (s.XVII) quien heredó la imprenta de su esposo, Margaret Fuller (s.XIX) quien escribió en el New York Tribune, Carmen Burgos (finales del s.XIX-principios del s.XX) quien se considera la primera corresponsal de guerra, entre otras. Personalmente, me fascina la biografía de Elizabeth Jane Cochran, quien se aburrió de la cobertura informativa sobre moda, sociedad y cultura y terminó viajando por todo el mundo y siendo corresponsal en la Primera Guerra Mundial…
Efectivamente, Catalina. Por desgracia, aún sigue siendo necesario reivindicar nuestros derechos, a pesar de los logros conseguidos. Somos la mitad de la ciudadanía y, aun así, tenemos que reclamar nuestro puesto en la sociedad, cosa que no tiene que hacer la otra mitad.
Quizás por ello, me he animado al viaje de mi vida: a la Luna, tal vez desde allí pueda comprender algo menor como unos seres tan ínfimos en el universo como son los seres humanos, se comportan de forma tan inhumana
Porque vivimos en la era de la globalización, en la que impera el individualismo más feroz: mis deseos, mis caprichos…son mis derechos.
El “Yo” está destruyendo el “nosotros” aunque me temo que viene de lejos, no es un logro de un dia.
Así es, pero ahora, con las condiciones de vida actuales, es más perverso. No hemos avanzado tanto como creemos
la lista de nombres es larga, un par de ejemplos Sofía Casanova (1851-1968),Nellie Bly (1864-1922) y Marina Ginestà (1919-2014) por mencionar algunas pioneras. Todavía hay mucho camino por andar!