Inequality and Women in the City-state
Social and economic inequality among citizens persisted as part of life in the
polis despite the legal guarantees of citizenship, The incompleteness of
the equality that underlay the political structure of the city-state especially revealed
itself in the status of citizen women. Women became citizens of the city-states in the
crucial sense that they had an identity, social status, and local rights denied metics
and slaves. The important difference between citizen and non-citizen women was made
clear in the Greek language, which included terms meaning
“female
citizen”1 (politis), in certain religious cults reserved for citizen women only, and
in legal protection against being kidnapped and sold into slavery. Citizen women also
had recourse to the courts in disputes over property and other legal wrangles, but they
could not represent themselves and had to have men speak for their interests, a
requirement that reveals their inequality under the law. The traditional paternalism of
Greek society—men acting as “fathers” to regulate the
lives of women and safeguard their interests as defined by men—demanded that
every woman have an official male guardian (
kurios
2 ) to protect them physically and legally. In line with this assumption about the
need of women for regulation and protection by men, women were granted no rights to
participate in politics. They never attended political assemblies, nor could they vote.
They did hold certain civic priesthoods, however, and
they had access along with
men to the initiation rights3 of the popular cult of
the
goddess4 Demeter at Eleusis near Athens. This internationally renowned cult,
about
which more is said elsewhere in the Overview5, served in some sense as a safety valve for the pressures created by the
remaining inequalities of life in Greek city-states because it offered to all regardless
of class its promised benefits of protection from evil and a better fate in the
afterworld.
