The word misogyny is a borrowing from Greek, μισογυνία, meaning hatred or dislike of, or prejudice against, women. So let's take a moment to examine the status of women in Classical Athens.

Under Athenian law, women's rights were limited: They were barred completely from political life. An Athenian woman was not permitted to represent herself in law (they needed a man, of course), although weirdly a metic woman could (a metic was a resident alien; free, but without the rights and privileges of citizenship). They were also forbidden from conducting any economic transactions, other than trivial ones. They had very limited ability to own property, although they could have dowries, and they could inherit property.

Athenian girls could not receive a formal education, as boys did, instead their mother would teach them the skills they would need to run a household. They married young, often to much older men. When they married, Athenian women had two rôles; to bear children, and to run the household. The ideal Athenian woman did not go out in public or interact with men she was not related to.

Greek mythology is rife with misogyny – the best example probably being Pandora, the first woman, who opened a box which unleashed all evils such as travail, sickness, old age, and death (the word translated as "box" was actually a large jar (πίθος pithos) in Greek). Misogyny seems to be a central feature of Athenian life, so I suppose we should not be surprised they had a word for it.

And on to the present: Misogyny rears its ugly head pretty much throughout modern life - even in nice, cultured societies, like the UK and USA; patriarchy, male privilege, discrimination, sexual harassment and violence against women, and the sexual objectification of women - which contributes itself to the other manifestations of misogyny.

So let’s look at each of those in turn.

To be continued…