Women are required by "halacha" to do all negative "mitzvot" (i. e., commandments that prohibit activities such as "Thou shalt not commit adultery"), but they are excused from doing most time-bound, positive "mitzvot" (i. e., commandments that proscribe ritual action that must be done at certain times such as hearing a shofar on Rosh Hashanah). A woman would not, however, be prohibited from doing a "mitzvah" from which she was excused. "Halacha" also provides women with material and emotional protections that most non-Jewish women did not enjoy during the first millennium of the Common Era. The penal and civil law of the time treated men and women equally.