मां हि पार्थ व्यपाश्रित्य येऽपि स्युः पापयोनयः।स्त्रियो वैश्यास्तथा शूद्रास्तेऽपि यान्ति परां गतिम्॥
māṃ hi pārtha vyapāśritya ye ’pi syuḥ pāpa-yonayaḥstriyo vaiśyās tathā śūdrās te ’pi yānti parāṃ gatim
Word by word
The verse says
Taking refuge in me, Arjuna, even those who are said to be of low birth — women, merchants and labourers alike — even they reach the highest goal.
In plain words
The most generous thing in the chapter and the most insulting thing in the chapter are the same sentence.
The door is opened to everybody who had been kept outside it. And the sentence that opens it calls them pāpa-yonayaḥ — born of a sinful womb.
Both halves are in the Sanskrit. Neither can be edited out without lying about the verse.
Where you've felt this · in sport
A sports club that never admitted women finally changes its rule. The notice pinned to the board says that ladies may now also use the facilities. The door is genuinely open and everybody can walk through it, and the sentence that opened it still manages to sting on the way past.
Going deeper
Two things are true here and the honest thing is to refuse to choose between them.
The inclusion is real and it was radical. In the world this was written in, access to the highest religious goal was organised by birth. Women, the merchant class and the labouring class were, on the dominant view, outside the arrangement — not wicked, simply not eligible. This verse says they reach the same highest goal, by the same route, and it says so in one line without argument or qualification.
The premise is also real and it is insulting. The word used places them in a category of birth that is itself called sinful. The verse does not dispute the category. It says the category can be got past, which grants it in the act of overriding it. A modern reader who feels the sting is reading correctly, not projecting.
The same double move appeared in Chapter 5, where a learned brahmin, a cow, an elephant and an outcaste were said to be seen equally by the wise — equality stated in a list that still ranks.
What can be said for it is chronological rather than moral. The inclusion is the part that was new, and the insult is the part that was ordinary, and the verse is worth more for what it changed than for what it carried along unexamined. What cannot be said is that the insult is not there.