Greek Women

A detailed Summary of Greek Women

The women of Ancient Greece lived through a period of critical oppression, which would last several centuries. They were completely inferior and separated from a male society. Women were confined to the homes and restricted against free movement in the streets. Their duties were to bear children and attend to household affairs.

The roles of women in the family differed between the upper and lower classes. Women of the upper class were confined to the household - bearing children, child-care, spinning and weaving, and other domestic affairs. Women were wholly in charge of the production of textiles for the members of the family. Additional roles included bathing and annoiting their husbands (Beard 30-1).

Lower class women were not as strictly confined to the household as the upper class women were. Instead their duties included those of the upper class women as well as street or market vending and midwifery. They were considered inferior because many of their duties took place outside of the home, working side-by-side with slaves (Beard 30-31).

As less of a division of class, women in general shared many rituals and duties. On festive occasions women would have the honor of preparing meat. Preparation included such tasks as th

e slaughter, dressing, cooking, and distributing of the meat. Other rituals women shared were making breads and cakes. Because women were confined to the homes, they had free time to artistically express themselves. Many vases have been found showing women in-groups weaving, singing, and reading (Finnegan 13).

In the period of Archaic Greece, the oikos, or family unit, was the basic group within the polis. The oikos would include the immediate family, husband, wife, unmarried children, and married sons and their families. They would live within the organized polis, which "took on the role of providing the family with protection from its enemies, and in return the family owed it a variety of obligations, including military service (Blundell 66)."

Another restriction on women was that they were not allowed to attend dramatic festivals or comedies. In fact, if women were portrayed in a dramatic play, men would play them. These restrictions prevented women from enjoying the Athenian culture. Inheritance was strictly partrilineal in Archaic Greece. When a man died all of his land and substantial properties would be divided up among the sons. If the man had no sons the property would be passed to distant relatives.

The average age for a woman to marry was between fourteen and eighteen, while most men married around the age of thirty. Marriages were typically arranged in this manner in order to as

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Approximate Word count = 948
Approximate Pages = 4 (250 words per page double spaced)

Category: History