Gender inequality in Ancient Greek education

From the earliest times to the present, every society has aimed to preserve all the material and spiritual values it has, such as its culture, traditions and customs, to transfer these values to future generations and to continue their existence. Societies that needed children for this, started to educate children as soon as they were born, in order to make them citizens with the qualifications suitable for their own social values. In Athens and Sparta, two important city-states with different cultural characteristics in Ancient Greece, the fact that the roles of men and women in social life were quite different from each other caused differences in the roles that each society assigned to its citizens, men and women. In this situation, as the perspective on children changes from society to society, the education of children also differed according to the roles given to men and women. The gender inequality between men and women in Athens caused a clear gender gap between boys and girls and a divergence in the education of children. In addition, this gender inequality is reflected in the space in Athens, and girls are not accepted to androns, which are separated as men's space in the home, to the agora and stoas where speeches such as shopping, conversation and philosophy are held in the public area, to the palaistra where wrestling is held and to the gymnasions where physical education and philosophy speeches are held. These became important educational areas for boys. In Sparta, on the other hand, although there was no full equality between men and women due to the military structure of Sparta, there was no clear gender discrimination as in Athens. The spaces used in Sparta, where boys and girls received the compulsory education given by the state, were also inseparable from each other as men's and women's spaces. Keywords: Ancient Greece, Athens, Sparta, Woman, Child, Education