Paternalism and Women
More than anything else, a dual concern to regulate marriage and procreation and to
maintain family property underlay the placing of the legal rights of Greek women and the
conditions of their citizenship under the guardianship of men. The paternalistic
attitude of Greek men toward women was rooted in the
desire to control human
reproduction1 and, consequently, the distribution of property, a concern that gained special
urgency in the reduced economic circumstances of the Dark Age. Hesiod, for instance,
makes this point explicitly in relating the myth of the first woman, named
Pandora2. According to the legend, Zeus, the king of the gods, created Pandora
as a punishment for men when Prometheus, a divine being hostile to Zeus, stole fire from
Zeus to give it to Prometheus's human friends, who had hitherto lacked that technology.
Pandora subsequently loosed “evils and diseases” into the previously
trouble-free world of men by removing the lid from the jar or box the gods had filled
for her.
Hesiod then refers to Pandora's descendants, the female sex, as a
“beautiful evil” for men ever after, comparing them to drones who
live off the toil of other bees while devising mischief at home.3 But, he goes on to say, any man who refuses to marry to escape the
“troublesome deeds of women” will come to “destructive old
age” without any children to care for him. After his death, moreover, his
relatives will divide his property among themselves. A man must marry, in other words,
so that he can sire children to serve as his support system in his waning years and to
preserve his holdings after his death by inheriting them. Women, according to Greek
mythology, were for men a necessary evil, but the reality of women's lives in the
city-state incorporated social and religious roles of enormous importance.
