All cities, Empires, and River Valley Civilizations treated women like the lesser of the two sexes. Why was Sparta the first to give women rights? In this article, we will compare Athens to Sparta. Sparta, however, was the first to give women a sufficient amount of their own rights. But why did Sparta finally decide to give women rights? Researchers say that it was their giant win over their rival city-state Messenia. Athens did not have a giant slave population 3 times the size of them, but with Sparta having that big of a slave population, it caused them to need to give women more rights so they could help out around the town.
But women in Sparta were way more influential and useful than Athenian women. Women all throughout history have been the lesser of the two sexes. Sparta was known as a high military power having all men from 7 years old to 65 years old in the military. After the city-state of Messenia got overruled by the Spartans, Sparta had an abundance of farmland and the slave labor force to work in the fields. But with a slave labor force 3 times the population of the Spartans, they needed their military to watch them. Which, in turn, led to them not being able to work as merchants, and handle other jobs that women normally didn’t do.
Sources say that the main influence for Sparta to give women rights was to keep their city under control financially, and so that all men could enter into the military. Not all men went to war, however, some of the most skilled men in the classes were signed up for a secret police who were sent in to keep the Messenian slaves in line, and were even licensed to kill any trouble making slaves if need be. The lack of men in Sparta led them to just gradually give women rights in almost any position of labor in Sparta. Athenian women were only upposed to stay in their homes, look pretty, and bear children. But some lucky women could play instruments, make art and own slaves to do housework for them. But still could not choose whom to marry, go outside or own property. Respectable women weren’t just because their husbands political status. A Respectable women had to stay inside, raise children, and look pretty for their husband. When women had children in Sparta, it was acceptable to have a girl as much as it was for a boy. But not in Athens, when a women gave birth to a girl, it was frowned upon.
But in either society, a deformed child was set outside the city limits and left to die. Women in Athens were kept in gynaikon, where women were put to house women so they could have children and engaged in spinning thread and weaving clothing (Hemingway, 2004). Women in Sparta were not treated the same way, there was still a bias, as in women could not go into war because war is only for men. Aristotle was the main writer that wrote about how women act like “hogs,” he compares women to hogs that roll around in the mud and act like dirty animals that can’t function by themselves.
Many people such as Aristotle believed that slaves were always meant to be slaves because their soul lacked the rational part that makes a human being. One fourth century orator asserted that “God has made all men free, nature has made no man a slave” (Alcidamas, 301-400 AD) Aristotle has also been known to speak loudly about how women were very inferior to men. He wrongly believed that when a child is born, the way it thinks, acts, and lives its life was all from the father. He stated that the women didn’t actually give the baby its personality, she only gave the baby its matter and physical form.
He compared the men and women’s courage and bravery, aristotle used the comparison of a male squid and a female squid. When the male squid is impaled by a spear or a projectile weapon, the female squid would cower and swim away. Aristotle, although his erroneous biology led him to believe that women were just incomplete males and were only good for having children. But he did say that a community could only be happy if both men and women contributed to the society. And he also argued that marriage was for mutual comfort and trust but that the husband should rule.
Aristotle and plato were similar with their radical idealizations, but people say that plato was a champion of the female cause while Aristotle was labelled a male chauvinist. (Edna Ferber, 2003) Men in Sparta would sometimes have to sneak out of the barracks just to meet with their wives. Most men in Sparta trained until about their twenties, then got out of military school and went to live in the barracks. Every man in the army only got out by retirement, men would have had to fight in all their battles until they turned 65 and were able to retire from the military service.
Aristotle and Plato were Athenian philosophers, they did not have an impact over Spartan women, but had a giant impact over Athenian women and how men visualized them. The Spartan Government did not only give women rights, but the Spartan men would even sneak out of barracks to visit their wives too. The only legitimate job an Athenian women could have gotten was as a priestess. If a women had any large sum of wealth, they stayed home and did household chores and looked pretty for when the husband came home.
Many Athenian women were not allowed out of their homes, they were kept in a small rooms until they were a teenager. Women were then given off to a man that the husband sees fit for his daughter, if the women no longer had a father, she was given to the closest male relative in Athens so he could give her off to a man. Women that lived in homes relied strongly on their husbands for daily things they would normally do themselves these days. Women needed escorts to go outside in public. The women and slaves managed the household responsibilities, most women in Athens just stayed inside their home all day.
Spartans with their lack of husbands to supervise the women doing jobs men normally did, had to give them incentives to continue working for them. And so they gave them rights to do almost anything in Sparta that was not of political stature. Even though women in athens were not given any rights to go on their own, they had more rights than the slaves around them everyday. Spartan women soon did not have children due to lack of men, and opportunity costs. The lack of men still only left political men to influence them to have children and do their jobs.
But Spartan women did not want to do their jobs because of the opportunity costs it caused having a child. When a women in sparta had a child, she was not able to work while pregnant and for the next seven years while they took charge of the child, or more than seven if it was a girl. Women were not able to work with a child, children were not being as often as athens were having children. Sparta soon lost its gigantic military prowess when they declined in population and the messenians revolted over Sparta. Athenians ruled athens with democracy, which lets all vote, but only let men vote, however.
But Sparta was run by a few men and was an oligarchy. Even though women were granted rights of Sparta, they were still unable to vote and were treated about as equally as slaves, in the political sense. Many a man, or women, were much more equal to each other than a slave. Slaves in sparta were controlled by a secret police force that consisted of high ranking kids in the spartan schools. They were allowed to kill any slaves they believed were causing trouble or just for backlash. They were still living in the barracks with the other men and did not get to live at home.
Women in Athens or Sparta, were ever recorded to be enrolled in the military. When in Sparta, an elderly couple lived together, the women were permitted not to listen to the husband and to give the husband orders. Most women were never living with a husband when they became old, because the husband mainly died in over the 35-some years in battle. Sparta was falling behind in population from Athens, athens rolled around a population base of about 140,000. But Sparta was was only at 100,000 by the 5th century.
When an Spartan baby is born, the male was tested for any eaknesses, if any weakness was identified, the baby would be set on the outskirts of the city and left to die. Athenian women were treated as well as slaves, meanwhile Spartan women were the only ones who were given equal rights as the men. But men were actually given less rights with only being able to live free until seven, then only to go home if they survived until age 65. Not many men survived until age 65 and were able to retire from the military. The Battle of Messenia and its eventual revolt over the Spartans were the only reason women were ever given rights in Sparta in the first place.
Not only without the Helots (Messenian Slaves) did Sparta fall because it couldn’t sustain a current population, this happened before the revolt by the Helots. The women who had jobs could not deal with the opportunity cost of having children, when they gave birth to a child, the women would give up about seven years of her life to raising a child who was then sent to military school at age seven. Women had an opportunity cost that prevented them from making any money if they had a child, no husband to make money with a job (Military was Mandatory, No Pay).
Some women could work and raise a child at the same time however it was never easy. Two weeks before the First Peloponnesian War, A giant earthquake ruptured Sparta and the Helots revolted and got away, this triggered a line of setbacks. Once that happened, the Spartans. It went from the strongest and biggest army, to the weakest military in greece. When the Macedonian war happened, Sparta offered no resistance, they were allowed to maintain a small and pitiful independence by the mercy of the Macedonians.
By the 4th to 5th century, it was the Athens and sparta’s mutual destruction period. The Peloponnesians, was Sparta’s treaty with a lot of the other city states around them, while Athens did the same thing with all the people they forced to join their alliance. Since Athens had the biggest military in all of ancient greece, when a city state declined to join, they blocked off all the ports in which other city states used to get food, clothes, and other supplies from their river based trade network.
After awhile they would join and Athens and Sparta both had huge alliances. Once the first Peloponnesian war broke out between Athens and Sparta, once Athens realized both sides were at a halt, they approached with a treaty saying for peace for the next thirty years. After about 16 some years, Athens could not resist and messed up one of the Spartans trade networks, this set them into their mutual destruction of each other. This started a series of wars that would later be known in Greek history as the 2nd Peloponnesian war.
Many women in Sparta were only given rights because of the slave labor force they controlled, but after the Spartans lost that labor force, you can see the women’s rights in Sparta, turn around to be as equal as Athenian women. Many women during the classical and older periods and also beyond this time, were not treated the same way as the Spartans treated their women. The main reason reason Spartans gave their women rights, were because of the giant Messenian labor force they were able to keep hold of for around 2 centuries.
