Woman in Ancient Greece

The social and political life of women living in Athens during the Ancient Greek period is analyzed. Women were categorized as goddesses, housewives, mothers, slaves, concubines, prostitutes and hetairas in the period and environment they lived in. For housewives, the household, the environment in which they lived, was also their sphere of production. They wove cloth at home and sewed clothes for the people living in the household. A married woman's dowry was exclusively owned by the man to whom she married. This protects the future rights of the married woman and her future children. Little girls learn to read and write from their mothers. When they become young women, their parents decide whom they marry. Boys, on the other hand, learn from their mothers at home with their sisters until the age of seven, after they are educated in schools. Women don't have the right to vote and be elected, this right belongs to men. As seen in the epics, only female goddesses can live as they wish and are perfect. Even if they behave badly, this doesn't make them evil. In poetry and theater, goddesses are seen because bards are inspired by ancient sources. In philosophy, Plato in his early works positioned women as inferior to men. In his later works, he stated that men and women should work on equal terms in order to create the ideal state. Aristotle, on the other hand, talked about how women's morality should be. Under the last heading, women philosophers, it was understood that women could read and improve themselves if they were either the wife or daughter of a philosopher or if they were hetaira. With the emergence of philosophers, the use of masculine-dominant speech began to emerge. The condemnation of married women to a life of moderation, the lack of political rights for women and the presence of only men at feasts are examples of patriarchal society.