I do not really know if Plato's mother or Xanthippe, Socrates' wife, wore heels, but I am sure they could stomp their sandals when necessary because they were women with vigor and strength. Women who indisputably proved, by giving to history, incontestable figures who have remained fadeless, unalterable and up to date through the centuries.
It does not matter if Socrates could not resist or oppose his sweet wife's stomp of her heels, because even if she were well hidden in her lot, she succeeded to draw him by the nose. Because the heels, sandals, cothurns, or whatever their name, have their own history. Initially, in ancient Egypt, men wore heels to show their social supremacy and in ancient Athens, actors would wear them on stage. Later on, this idea reached the Renaissance when King Louis wore them to diversify himself from the crowd who did not have the right to wear them. In the 50s, Christian Dior made the revolution creating the stiletto heels where the woman's body was accentuated with such an effeminacy, so that the stiletto heel became a "lethal" heel for men's feelings. Thus, the resplendent woman's presence had made the difference with any kind of height she wore, either flat as a sandal or as a seven-inch (15 cm) pump.
One thing is sure, that the woman's feminine nature has never changed through the centuries and it never will.
The Greek Athenian's woman position in the antiquity is well known that she was destined to stay in her private apartment with the only obligations to look after the house and be a mother.
It is difficult for me to understand that in such an advanced cultural society the woman should be invisible from all expressions of life... As it is also difficult to consider that these men who produced sublime and upmost theories giving their ideas about all issues from the world's creation till the most banal by analyzing the daily life to a science with a simple but a deeply philosophical thought, wanted the woman degrading and subordinate to them. The answer is "no", they did not discriminate against women. Essentially, looking deeply through their thoughts, they had no decremental reason but as always-deep mediators of life, they thought that the Athenian woman was the gene keeper of the purity of the eugenic race, so they gave her a lot of importance by keeping her safe at home.
If we only think of the Greek Mythology Pantheon, it was shared by six Gods and six Goddesses enjoying the same honors with the male Gods and parity rules among them.
"Even the Father of Gods, the Great Zeus, who is Hera's husband, she is called coequal to him," Proklos reveals in his comment in Timaios 46 l. It had been many times that Hera had to metamorphose and revenge her husband whenever she felt that she had been cheated on. But she had the power and imposing presence to achieve whatever she had on her mind. She is, undoubtedly, a Goddess with human feelings and passions chasing women who are in Zeus's favor. He was player no matter what...
Alexandra Symeonidou is a best-selling author in Greece and has published 10 novels, translated three French theater plays from old French to Greek and two children's books. Nightmares in the Saudi Arabian Desert is her autobiography and her first translation from Greek to English. It is available on Amazon.