Thus, a close examination of both primary and secondary sources leads to an understanding that ancient Athenian women operated in separate spheres from their husbands but that they were not devoid of rights or oppressed. Rather, their activities were simply aligned with the cultural realities of their time. rst plague is the hated race of women," while another-a woman-states, "Women manage homes and preserve the goods which are brought from abroad. Houses where there is no wife are neither orderly nor prosperous. And in religion - I take this to be important - we women play a large part . . . How then can it be just that the female sex should be abused?" (Cohen 4). The dilemma for modern historians is that it is difficult to differentiate between the culturally imposed separation of men and women, which was intended to preserve women's chastity and thus men's honor, and the seclusion that many historians seem to extrapolate from that separation; the two are not the same (Cohen 6). Cohen, David. "Seclusion, Separation, and the Status of Women in Classical Athens. Greece & Rome, Second Series, 36.1, (Apr 1989), 3-15. JSTOR. |
