The play opens with Praxagora swinging a lamp as she enters. Soon after a Chorus of women from the city come together in order to craft together a plan to overtake the city. Aristophanes' play begins with a city in need of new leadership. It has been led astray by the greed of these current Assemblymen and the only solution is to get rid of them as the authoritative class.
Praxagora makes it clear how the women would serve the people better and is able to orate so well she convinces the Assembly to pass that the women should be in power. However, this Assembly meeting is rigged as the women from the Chorus are all dressed as men to root on Praxagora. Aristophanes is revealing that this is an Assembly who does not vote independent of what is popular. Instead they take their cues from who cries the loudest for fear of being left out after a vote.
Thus, Praxagora leads women into power in the play as she receives the necessary Assembly votes. Still, we see clearly that the city has gone off balance as an elderly woman accosts a young man to have sex with her before he can sleep with the young girl he is in love with, it became a statute that anyone with charisma had to sleep with someone of the opposite sex who is ugly before they can be with anyone beautiful.
Aristophanes is pointing out clearly that the power-wielding orations of the Assembly members come off as wonderfully well-conceived plans, but plans nonetheless that have not been thought through. Instead, they seek that pleasure and fairness be the point of society, when in reality they've created a system of regulations that alters the entire makeup of the city for the worse.
