Constantinople, now Istanbul, was the original Greek colony of Byzantium, renamed by Emperor Constantine I the Great in 330 AD. It was the capital of the Byzantine Empire (395-1453 AD) or Eastern Roman Empire until the year 620 AD, when Emperor Heraclius I adopted Greek as the official language.
Byzantine empresses rose to political prominence as time went on. As early as the 5th century, Eudoxia, wife of Arcadius, had a great influence on the politics of the Empire. Eudocia, wife of Theodosius II, protected Jews and pagans and promoted culture; her works include a paraphrase of the Octateuch in hexameter. Pulcheria, sister of Theodosius II, ensured the continuity of the Byzantine Empire in a time of great upheaval. Theodora, the co-regent empress, lived in the 6th century, but later we find Irene, who in the 8th century convened two councils and, after killing her son, became the first Byzantine empress to occupy the throne, not as consort or regent, but in her own name. In the 11th century, Zoe survived three emperor husbands and many conspiracies and power games. Anna Komnene, too, in the 12th century, was the author of The Alexiad, the story of her father's reign.
Theodora, from her influence in the political and legal field, was a staunch defender of women's rights like so many others throughout history. As early as the 1st century BC, Hortense gave a speech to the triumvirate in defence of matrons, and the orators Messia and Carfania also publicly defended themselves against social roles. In the 2nd century, the empresses Faustina the Elder and Faustina the Younger were concerned with the education of poor girls.
Later, Wilhelmina of Bohemia (13th c.) proposed the creation of a women's church, because they did not feel represented; the famous Sardinian judge Leonor of Arborea (14th c.) promulgated the Logu Charter, considered one of the first examples of a constitution in the world; Christine de Pisan (15th c.), author of The City of Ladies, was the initiator of the Women's Complaint; The Mexican writer Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz (17th century) defended women's right to education and knowledge, and Olympe de Gouges (18th century) was the author of the Declaration of the Rights of Women and Citi.
In the 19th century, English philosopher Mary Wollstonecraft wrote Vindication of the Rights of Woman; in the United States, journalist Margaret Fuller authored The Woman of the 19th Century; the abolitionist Sojourner Truth gave the famous speech Am I Not a Woman? and the lawyer and suffragist Mary Ann Shadd was editor of an anti-slavery newspaper; the Brazilian educator and poet Nísia Floresta wrote Women's Rights and Men's Injustice; the Argentinean trade unionist Virginia Bolten founded the newspaper The Voice of Women; and in Spain, Concepción Arenal, author of The woman of the future, was the first woman university professor and one of the pioneers of feminism.
In the 20th century, English suffragette Christabel Harriette Pankhurst founded the Women's Party; in India, writer and lawyer Cornelia Sorabji and activist Pandita Ramabai fought against child marriage; In Spain, Ascensión Chirivella, the first woman in the country to practice law, and the politicians and lawyers Clara Campoamor and Victoria Kent - with opposing positions on the issue of women's suffrage - were key figures in the struggle for equality, as was María Telo Núñez, author of My fight for women's legal equality and promoter of vital changes in the 1975 reform of the Civil Code, which eliminated ‘marital leave’; and in France, the right to abortion was legalised in 1975 with the so-called Simone Veil law.