Citizenship and the Social Position of Athenian Women in the Classical Age. A Prospect for Overcoming the Antithesis of Male and Female

Opinions range from one extreme to the other on the position of women in Classical Athens. The orthodox view, coming down from the late 19th century and the early 20th century, is that Greek citizen wives were generally despised and kept in seclusion. From the first half of the 20th century, however, challenges have been raised against the alleged subjugation of women, with the contention that women were respected and enjoyed more freedom than was thought. In the last half of the 20th century S.B. Pomeroy gave a warning that women should not be treated as an undifferentiated mass, and contended that different standards should be applied to the categories of citizens, resident foreigners (metoikoi), and slaves.In my opinion, however, the differences among social groups should not refer just to women, but to the citizens themselves. The criterion for citizenship is not one and the same for all the epochs and places. Furthermore, in the same society there could be multiple criteria for citizenship. For example, one is the political rights to assume military service and magistrates of the government and to vote in the assembly, and the other is some traditional rights inside the family and its related kinship, demos and phyle, which were sub-structures of polis. The women, who did not participate in the government, were also called citizens (aste or politis), as they had social and economic rights in the family and kinship society. Actually, as considerable parts of the functions of polis were carried out on the level of its sub-structures, the politics of polis in ancient Greek society assume less significance than they do in the modern state today.