Coen van Galen Women and citizenship in the late Roman Republic and the early Empire
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In his dissertation van Galen makes short work of the idea that only men were real citizens in Ancient Rome. Although the society of Ancient Rome was masculine , many women in the Roman Empire had more personal freedom than women in western countries until the twentieth century. In his dissertation Van Galen studies this apparent contradiction. He shows that Roman women had a social role as citizens and could even become head of the family. This was possible by making use of the unique Roman family structure, the familia, a structure in which legal adulthood was unknown and often no account was taken of the normal man-woman role division. Consequently normal roles could be reversed and a Roman woman could be head of the family, while her husband had no powers and no property of his own.