The Targum Pseudo-Jonathan preserves one of the most surprising details in the entire Sinai narrative: "Moses on the second day went up to the summit of the mount; and the Lord called to him from the mount, saying, This shalt thou speak to the [women] of the house of Jacob, and instruct the house of Israel" (Exodus 19:3).
The Aramaic inserts women explicitly. The Hebrew has the famous phrase "thus shall you say to the house of Jacob, and tell the children of Israel," and the classical midrash — preserved in Mekhilta d'Rabbi Yishmael and echoed by Rashi — reads "the house of Jacob" as the women, and "the children of Israel" as the men.
Why were the women addressed first? Several answers circulate in the rabbinic tradition. Because women are the transmitters of tradition in the home. Because the Torah would not be accepted without their consent. Because at the golden calf, it would be the women who refused to donate their jewelry, and God was honoring in advance their faithfulness.
The Targum's version of Exodus 19:3 makes this reading native to the verse. Before Torah was given to anyone, it was spoken to the women of the house of Jacob. That ordering is theology in grammar.
The takeaway: the covenant was not delivered above women's heads. It was delivered into their hands first, and only then into everyone else's.