Women's Roles In Athens And The Hellenistic Era

Women’s roles has changed dramatically throughout history. By looking at the lives of women, it would be possible to tell how the civilians at that specific period of time were living. In this paper, women’s lives in mainly three civilizations would be discussed, the Sparta, the Athens, and the Hellenistic era. In Sparta, women were needed to live at home, while their husbands remained in military barracks until the age thirty. Because of this separation, Spartan women had greater freedom to move around more. Permitted to own and inherit land, Spartan women had more power in the household than what was common for women elsewhere in Greece, and they could even supervise large estates. They were encouraged to exercise and remain fit to bear and raise healthy children. Like the man, Spartan women engaged in athletic exercises in the nude. Comparatively, Athenian women had less right and freedom. Women were citizens who could participate in most religious cults and festivals but were otherwise excluded from public life. They could not own property beyond personal items and always had a male guardian: If unmarried, a father or male relative; if married, a husband; if widowed, a son or male

Clearly, Sparta and Hellenistic women had more freedom and social rights than Athens women. The reason of how this phenomena occurred might be that at that period of time, Athens had the largest population of Attica. This indicates that the in this male community in Athens, the males could carry on almost all of the responsibilities of a society while the women could just stay at home and serve the men while they took part in public life. However, in Sparta and the Hellenistic era which there were not so much people around, women’s role would be more than simply taking care of household and children, they would need to shoulder some responsibility for their society, which brought along freedom and rights for