"And if men quarrel" — this verse mentions men. But does the law of personal injury apply only to men? What about women who injure others or are injured? Rabbi Yishmael argued that all injury laws in the Torah apply equally to women.
His proof came from a general principle. Throughout the Torah, injury laws are stated without specifying gender. But in one case — (Exodus 21:29), regarding an ox that kills — the Torah explicitly includes "a man or a woman." Rabbi Yishmael reasoned: since the Torah went out of its way to specify women in one particular injury case, it was signaling that women are included in all injury cases. The explicit mention in one verse unlocks the implicit inclusion across every verse.
This interpretive move is powerful. Rather than requiring the Torah to mention women separately in every single law of damages, Rabbi Yishmael treated one explicit mention as a master key that opened all the others. The Torah specified "a man or a woman" once to establish the principle. Every other injury law, even though it mentions only "men," is understood to include women as well.
The practical implication was enormous. Women had full standing in Jewish injury law — both as potential claimants and as potential defendants. A woman who injured someone owed the same compensation a man would. A woman who was injured was entitled to the same recovery. One verse established gender equality across an entire legal domain.