Women in Roman Private Associations

Abstract

Despite the progress that has been made in the field of research on Roman private colleges, our knowledge of women's participation in corporate life has not changed significantly for almost a century. Based on an analysis of the epigraphic sources, I try to show that the presence of women among the members of both professional and religious colleges was a rare phenomenon, with no clear impact on the functioning of these organizations. The role that women played in Roman corporatism stands in stark contrast to the vision of the colleges as an alternative social space in which boundaries based on legal status or gender were to be blurred. On the contrary, it seems that Roman corporations attempted to, as much as possible, follow the same models and rules that were binding in the civic space. The collegia did not create an alternative social reality. They had no space for a “revolutionary” reversal of the social order: women appeared among the corporati, but their presence did not go far beyond traditional ideas about the role of women in public life.