Almost 25 centuries have been needed to put into practice something that Plato was already clear about back in the 4th century BC:the incorporation of women as soldiers in the Army . For Plato the importance that women should have in society is shown, above all, in three of his Socratic Dialogues. At the Banquet she is a woman, Diotima , the teacher about love and about the vision of the world; in the Menexeno , she is another woman, Aspasia , the teacher in rhetoric; and in The Republic the philosopher proposes equality for men and women in education and in the exercise of functions in society.
In The Republic Plato he develops what he considers to be a perfectly functioning society, proposing a society divided into three social classes:the artisans, the warriors, and the rulers . In each social class, the role given to women is much more active and egalitarian than imaginable, and as an example here is a small fragment of one of the dialogues:
-But we will say, I believe, that there are women gifted for medicine and others who are not; women musicians and others denied by nature for music.
-How not?
-And aren't there perhaps suitable for gymnastics and war and others who are not warlike or fond of gymnastics?
-I think so.
-So what? Lovers and enemies of wisdom? And some fiery and others lacking in fieryness?
-There are also.
-Therefore, there are also women suitable to be guardians and those who are not.
-Therefore, dear friend, there is no occupation in the city regiment that is proper to women as such women or to men as such men, but the natural endowments are scattered indistinctly in both beings, so that women have access by its nature to all the tasks and the man also to all; only that women are weaker than men in everything.
-Exactly...
(The Republic. Book V 455c – 456b)
It is when speaking of the warriors and the guardians that Plato delves deeper into the issue of equality between the sexes. The guardian women are born from the idea that Plato has of Justice, for him the fair thing is that each person fulfills the function for which she is best qualified. The philosopher considers that it is contrary to nature, and therefore unfair, that for biological reasons women are assigned different functions from men, and maintains that everyone should perform functions according to their abilities. Plato comes to use the myth of the Amazons to defend that what each society demands and expects from women depends much more on education and culture than on a different "feminine nature".
Today we know that there have been great heroines throughout history, there may even have been an exclusively female army like that of the Amazons that Plato also tells us about, but what we cannot deny is that it has taken us almost 25 centuries to arrive to the same idea he arrived at. It has really cost us work:almost 2,500 years we have needed to accept that women can develop a military career just like men. The incorporation of women into the army as combatants did not occur until the end of the 20th century and that only in some armies of the world. In Spain they were able to enter the military career starting in 1988 and until 1999 they were banned from positions considered more complicated or dangerous.
The figure of the guardian not only takes hold slowly in reality, but also in the collective imagination. Strong and determined women with a military education are no longer a rarity in movies, series and novels. Contrary to what one might think, the scripts come from female hands. There are many examples of this, here you have one, the novel Dodecahedron by Antonia Hierro .
see Dodecahedron in myLIBRETO