Arabia was a male-dominated society. Women had no status of any kind other than as objects.The number of women a man could marry was not fixed. When a man died, his son "inherited" all his wives except his own mother. A savage custom of the Arabs was to bury their female infants alive. Even if an Arab did not wish to bury his daughter alive, he still had to uphold this "honorable" tradition, being unable to resist social pressures. It's a true story of a companion of The Prophet.