Livy recounts how the noblewoman Verginia, daughter of an ancient consular family, the Verginii, and spouse of a plebeian military hero and political leader, confronted the patrician matrons over the right to worship at the state patrician shrine in the Forum Boarium (the precise location of the shrine is unknown) of the personified female virtue Pudicitia (see coin for an image). Devoted to the modest behavior expected of noble matrons, the cult was open only to married women of the patrician class who were both chaste and univira (married once). The patrician women judged that Verginia had lost her elite class privileges by marrying out of her rank, an option open to citizens from 445 BCE and the first victory in the long struggle between the orders for equal constitional rights. Although by this time plebeians had access to consular office -- in 296 BCE Verginia's husband was in his second term as consul -- yet another secession of the Plebs, the third and final, would take place in 287 BCE. Livy's account of the origin of the cult of Pudicitia Plebeia demonstrates the extension to women of the class warfare and, under the leadership of a strong, articulate, intelligent woman, their arrival at a typically Roman compromise that avoided civic violence, retained division between the classes, and satisfied both sides, if only temporarily.
For more information on the implications for women of the conflict of the orders, see the article by I. Maehle on female cults.