In Rome and in Japan, Hobhouse notes (op. cit., vol. i, pp. 169, 176), the patriarchal system reached its fullest extension, yet the laws of both these countries placed the husband in a position of practical subjugation to a rich wife.
Herodotus, Bk. ii, Ch. XXXV. Herodotus noted that it was the woman and not the man on whom the responsibility for supporting aged parents rested. That alone involved a very high economic position of women. It is not surprising that to some observers, as to Diodorus Siculus, it seemed that the Egyptian woman was mistress over her husband.
Hobhouse (loc. cit.), Hale, and also Grosse, believe that good economic position of a people involves high position of women. Westermarck (Moral Ideas, vol. i, p. 661), here in agreement with Olive Schreiner, thinks this statement cannot be accepted without modification, though agreeing that agricultural life has a good effect on woman's position, because they themselves become actively engaged in it. A good economic position has no real effect in raising woman's position, unless women themselves take a real and not merely parasitic part in it.