Life in Ancient Athens isn’t very exciting for a woman. We cannot do much. Women in ancient Athens had very little choices open to them. If they were lucky, they could read a little, play an instrument, and owned slaves to do the daily household tasks. Women could not vote nor own property. They could not choose whom to marry nor own/sell anything of great value.
If you were a respectable woman, you could not even walk around town except occasionally to a neighbor’s house or to a religious service. A young girl often went from her father’s house to her husband’s while she was still young, accompanied by a dowry and her virginity.
A respectable woman’s main role in ancient Athens was to stay home, keep pretty, and bear children. Her life centered
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Many brothels were owned by the state. Poor women might be forced to take a job in the marketplace, the fields, or in an inn. They were valued even lower than prostitutes but now as low as slaves. Slaves were common in ancient Athens and performed much of the domestic work needed in the household. With no rights whatsoever, slaves were at the mercies of their masters and mistresses with no legal recourse available.
The one exception to the classes of women were the priestesses. Priestesses were necessary to conduct and organize the over 100 annual religious events that occurred yearly in Athens. These women had high status, relative freedom, and remained unmarried. And as true today, most events would have fallen apart without their organization by women.
The daily life of a housewife would involve supervising the household tasks and slaves for the day, the care and raising of any children, making clothing and any other items the house needed for daily running, and, of course, waiting for her husband to come home much later. While her life focused on the smooth operation of her house, his life centered mostly outside the house. This was her only sphere of influence and even that could be over-ruled by her husband if he