In Greek mythology, Medusa (Greek: Μέδουσα, Médousa, "guardian, protectress") and some times known as the Gorgon, was a monstrous chthonic female character essentially an extension of an apotropaic mask whose gaze could turn on-lookers to stone. She was born of Phorcys and Ceto or in some cases, Typhon and Echidna. She had two sisters, Stheno and Euryale both of whom were immortal. Medusa on the other hand was not. They lived on an island at the end of the world.

In other versions she was a mortal with blonde hair and she was often depicted having no sisters. She was as priestess in Athena's temple, but when she was raped by Poseidon, theangered Athena transformed Medusa's beautiful hair to serpents and made her face so terrible to behold that the mere sight of it would turn men to stone. In Ovid's telling, Perseus describes Medusa's punishment by Athena as just and well-deserved.

“ He told of his long journeys, of dangers that were not imaginary ones, what seas and lands he had seen below from his high flight, and what stars he had brushed against with beating wings. He still finished speaking before they wished. Next one of the many princes asked why Medusa, alone among her sisters, had snakes twining in her hair. The guest replied ‘Since what you ask is worth the telling, hear the answer to your question. She was once most beautiful, and the jealous aspiration of many suitors. Of all her beauties none was more admired than her hair: I came across a man who recalled having seen her. They say that Neptune, lord of the seas, violated her in the temple of Minerva. Jupiter’s daughter turned away, and hid her chaste eyes behind her aegis. So that it might not go unpunished, she changed the Gorgon’s hair to foul snakes. And now, to terrify her enemies, numbing them with fear, the goddess wears the snakes, that she created, as a breastplate.”
Ovid, Metamorphoses iv. 799-803

But was that true? Did Athena punish Medusa?
To be truthful there is two sides to this story to be seen both the male and female aspect.
Male: being the laws of the society in which they lived often punished the girl for the crimes against them, it upheld their ideals and clarified the gods would side with them..
However
The female aspect could have been seen as, Medusa not being cursed for it but protected by her deity. As no male could look upon her, they couldn't hurt her again. Though inevitably the latter is shown when Athena assists Perseus in slaying her.

“Why the clime of Libya abounds in such plagues
and teems with death, or what bane mysterious
Nature has mingled with her soil — this no study
and pains of ours avail to discover; but a world-
wide legend has taken the place of the true cause
and deceived mankind. In the furthest parts of
Libya, where the hot earth admits the Ocean heated
by the sun when he sets, lay the broad untilled
realm of Medusa, daughter of Phorcys — a realm not
shaded by the foliage of trees nor softened by the
plough, but rugged with stones which the eyes
of their mistress had beheld. In her body malig-
nant Nature first bred these cruel plagues; from
her throat were born the snakes that poured forth
shrill hissings with their forked tongues. It pleased
Medusa, when snakes dangled close against her
neck; in the way that women dress their hair, the
vipers hang loose over her back but rear erect over
her brow in front; and their poison wells out when
the tresses are combed. These snakes are the only
part of ill-fated Medusa that all men may look upon
and live. For whoever felt fear of the monster's
face and open mouth? Who that looked her
straight in the face was suffered by Medusa to die?
She hurried on the hesitating stroke of doom and
anticipated all fear; the limbs were destroyed while
the breath remained; and the spirit, before it went
forth, grew stiff beneath the bones. The tresses
of the Eumenides raised madness only, Cerberus
lowered his hissing when Orpheus played, and
Amphitryon's son looked on the hydra when he
was conquering it; but this monster was dreaded
By Phocis, her own father and second ruler of
the sea, by her mother, Ceto, and even by her sister
Gorgons; she had power to threaten sky and sea
with strange paralysis, and clothe the world with
stone. Birds grew heavy suddenly and fell down
from the sky; beasts remained motionless on their
rocks; and whole tribes of the neighboring
Ethiopians were turned to statues. No living
creature could endure to look on her, and even her
serpents bent backward to escape her face. She
turned to stone Atlas, the Titan who supports the
Pillars of the West; and when the gods in time
past dreaded the serpent-legged Giants at Phlegra,
she changed the rebels into high mountains, till that
awful battle of the gods was won by the Gorgon
on the center of the breast of Pallas. To this land
came Perseus, sprung of Danae's womb and the
shower of gold; he was borne aloft on the Parr-
hasian wings of that Arcadian god who invented
the lyre and the wrestler's oil. And when, as he
flew, he suddenly lifted the scimitar of the Cyllenian
— A scimitar red with the blood of another monster;
for he had already laid low the guardian of the
heifer loved by Jupiter — the maiden Pallas brought
aid to her winged brother. She bargained to have
the monster's head, and then bade Perseus when
he reached the border of the Libyan land, to turn
towards the rising sun and fly backwards through
the Gorgon's realm; and she put in his left hand
a glittering shield of tawny bronze, in which she
told him to view Medusa that turned all things to
stone. Medusa slept; but the slumber that was to
bring upon her the unending rest of death did not
overcome her wholly: much of her hair kept watch,
and the snakes leaned forward from the tresses to
protect the head, while the rest of the hair fell
right over the face, covering the closed eyes with
darkness and doubling the veil of sleep. Pallas
herself directed Perseus in his haste; her right
hand guided the shaking scimitar of the Cyllenian
which he held with his face averted; and thus she
clove the place where the great snaky neck joined
the body. How looked the Gorgon then, when her
head was severed by the stroke of the curving blade!
What fell poison must I suppose was breathed forth.”

Lucan, Bellum civile ix.624–684