Socrates
"Once made equal to man, woman becomes his superior."
The Meaning
From this quotation, you can see that Socrates is trying to convey the point that a man is no more superior than a woman, and that if society would allow a balance between men and women, the women, being freed from the chains of society's expectations, would be capable of rising over the men. Socrates wants to bring people to awareness, to let people know that because they are downgrading women, women can not rise to contribute to society - and people are losing several opportunities because of that. In other words, a decent amount of the population is not allowed to educate themselves, so they are impotent to higher-level research. That lowers the chance of human discovery, human education, and human progression. This relates to Socrates' typical philosophies because he has talked a lot about gender equality. Previously, he has spoken about how he sees women as humans of use in a perfect society. Socrates is not a feminist, but he does understand that men and women are equal, aside from physical strength. Socrates wants us to know that we are all human, whether we are male or not. He even pushes to say that women are able to become superior over men, if only they were not shoved down by society.
Relation to Ancient Greece
This quote has much to do with Ancient Greece overall. In Greek culture, the women were thought of lowly. They took on the roles of a maid and a wife. Aristotle, another Greek philosopher, thought of women as people who simply provided children. Women were free, but they barely had any rights. In Ancient Greece's government, only men were allowed to join the government and vote. In their opinion, women should not have rights. Therefore, Socrates comes to wonder how life would be like if women had the same rights as men, and concluded that "once made equal to man, woman becomes his superior."
Works Cited
"Ancient Greece Gender Roles." Google Images. 17 September 2016.
"Balanced Scale for Women and Men." Google Images. 17 September 2016.
Maxwell, Max. "A Socratic Perspective on Gender Identity." N.p., n.d. Web. 17 Sept. 2016.