Women’s status in Christendom exceeded that in polygamous societies

Evidence

It is of course incorrect to say anything positive about Western civilization, or anything negative about non-Western civilizations—so how does one deal with the inescapable fact that the position of women in Christendom, though far from equality, was vastly better than in most other societies where polygamy and concubinage were legally and socially acceptable? The resulting contortions can sometimes be quite entertaining. — Bernard Lewis, From Babel to Dragomans, 1860

Categorization

• XREF: Directly relevant to the reader’s already-published article on the long history of ‘immodesty’ moral panics, which also deals with cross-cultural comparisons of norms around women. — connects to: Marriage was the only available path for a woman to become a free being — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 1356; Pantheistic sects granted women religious freedoms orthodox churches denied — Carolyn Merchant, The Death of Nature: Women, Ecology,…, 531
• ADDENDUM: Could support a follow-up to ‘Complaints About Immodesty Go Way Back’ by contrasting the comparative position of women across civilizations as a check on relativism.