Richard, I’m not quite clear what you’re answering in your last.

I mentioned Sparta and Shogunate Japan as societies in which homosexuality was acceptable, not as examples of women’s rights — although, as you point out, Sparta did have a tradition of women’s rights to property etc. (On the other hand, they had a tradition that included both chattel slavery and ownership of the citizens by the State.)

If you’re trying to argue that there is a general upward trend in women’s rights, I’ll note that while Shogunate Japan wasn’t a notable example of women’s rights, Heian Japan (as in the Genji Monogatari or Sei Shonagon’s Diary) let women own property and was quite sexually open six hundred years earlier. While current conservative sects of Islam are quite oppressive — to women and pretty much everyone else — The Q’ran is comparatively “liberal” and in fact the Prophet married his “boss”, who owned the business.

I think i’d argue that women “won” the vote by being insufferable pains in the ass until either the essential rightness of their opinion became clear, or their husbands just couldn’t stand it any longer.

Whch, come to think of it, is more or less the way my ex handled arguments too.