Feminism in Themiclesia

Feminism in Themiclesia emerged in an organized movement around 1879 for the legal protection and extension of women's political, legal, and economic rights and their legal equality to men, and the movement subsequently flourished as a field of study and activism in many of aspects of social, domestic, and professional life.

Background

Though once controverted, there is now little doubt that women had pivotal roles during the first centuries of Themiclesian politics and were considered capable of rulership under some circumstances.  

At least two figures in the Canon of Patriarchs, the list of Tsins kings from deep antiquity to the end of the 4th century, are conclusively identified as female since the discovery of the two Madame Krang's Tripod (婦庚二鼎). The commissioner states in the first tripod that his or her mother was given 100 bunches of large cowries (大貝朋厥百) by the "Patriarch's Lady" (白君), but in the second tripod, made some years later, the commissioner referred to the giver of the same cowries only as the "Patriarch" (白), showing that the consort had become regnant by the time the second vessel was made. The female "Patriarch" wielded sufficient power, at least as it appeared from inscriptions, to ask the elders of the clans to till her fields (辰田) and collect goods (采) from afar and to raise troops (登人) from her own lands. This identification resolved the age-old question why the Canon of Kings records the "generation" broke after her ascension.

The fact that women could be the leaders of clans is also found in the archaic style of the Tsins ruler's consort, which was simply brak or "Patriarch", and from that period dates the tradition that the Empress of Themiclesia lived in her own palace, not that of her husband. Yet women In the 7th century, this appellation was deemed anomalous and a corruption of a supposed brak-gi, or "Patriarch's Lady". However, most researchers believe that, much of the time, the wife of a male ruler of Tsins would have been a ruler of a clan in her own right, and so it is not unnatural for the title "Patriarch" to apply to the male ruler's consort automatically or by courtesy.