Roles Of Women In Sparta

Section 1: Identification and Evaluation of Sources

This investigation will be done in order to find what the similarities and differences between the role of women of Athens and Sparta were, using the research question: How did the roles of women of Sparta and Athens compare and contrast to each other? The amount of action women can take in a society reflects the culture’s values and beliefs. Therefore, researching to answer this question will lead to a deeper understanding of the Greek’s social structure. The main issues this investigation will focus on are women’s daily lives, ability to own property, and women in politics. The information will all be retrieved from the time period of 40 to 323 BCE in Athens and Sparta. Research will be …show more content…
As much as Sparta was focused on military and training boys to be strong, women were essential for childbirth. “The Spartans believe that, if girls trained hard, then they would make themselves strong for childbirth when they were older.” It was believed that stronger women would create stronger babies, and therefore the Spartans needed to train women as much as they did for men in order to ensure that the strength of the city state lived on. In order to train the Spartan girls, they “underwent an intensive physical training program which included discus and javelin throwing, and wrestling” with other boys. A similarity in daily task would be that the ultimate “duty of a wife was to provide her husband with offspring, preferably male offspring.” Like the Spartan women who were to train all for the purpose of having strong babies, Athenian women were to have many offspring for future generations. A difference in these women’s daily lives would be that on normal days, Spartan girls were allowed “to mix freely with boys”. They were able to express their thoughts and opinions openly in the public with other men. Meanwhile, Athenian women were restricted to live in their homes. Women conversing with men other than family members would rarely be seen on Athenian streets, unlike Spartans. A married Athenian woman would have to stay home and help with household chores. For Athenian women, they could only “go out in …show more content…
Despite the fact that some hypothesize that Athenian women would be granted more rights than the strict Spartans, it is actually that Spartan women owned more freedom as a whole. In all three components, Spartan women were given more freedom than Athenians. For instance, Athenian women were not allowed to own property while Spartan women were handed down the household’s wealth and given proprietary rights. These differences all occurred under the great influence of the major cultural differences, even though both Athens and Sparta are part of Greece. Spartans’ lifestyle is mainly directed in training men for fighting and therefore the women are granted freedom and proprietary rights as the society as a whole needed people to take care of the houses’ wealth and property while the men would be gone in strict military education. A similarity was seen between these women of very contrasting city-states in the idea that women were still inferior to men. All of the freedom allowed and the tasks that women were given were because these rights/ work would benefit the males of these city-states. It is clear that there are definite similarities and differences between the contrasting city-states’ women’s