The role of men and women

Basically, it was like this: men lived their life outside the house, women lived their life within the house. Of course, through time and space in ancient Greece, things varied and differed from the woman really not leaving the house and yard unto women sharing tasks with men like working on the fields and helping to sell crops on the market. From Thessaloniki down to Sparta, however, men were working and functioning outside the house, whereas women were based inside of the house.

THis also means that the action radius of men was much broader, wherever we look. In Athens, men were busy governing their city or at least taking part in this, while the women, who were able to be citizens were not supposed to take part in political life. The only purpose for them to be citizens seems to have been that they could bare children who could become citizens, provided that their natural father was one. Citizenship, in Athens (but there is no reason to suppose that things were different in other Greek City States), was an important thing, which people craved for, but which was only for a selected group of people.

In Sparta, we can see that women had a more free role, at least it seems to have been so. They were not supposed to leave their territory, like their men did, and go to war in a far off place, but at least they could participate in controlling and defending their territory (for example: they could be ordered by their government to participate in raids against rebelling helots, while their men were off to war in a far off part of Greece or even farther away). Spartan women were supposed to work their bodies to become strong and enduring, not only to bare healthy and strong children (which was the first purpose, though), but also to be strong for their country. Their action radius was somewhat broader than that of the Athenian woman.

Separate rooms

Greek houses, to some extent, especially the more luxurious ones, had separate rooms for men and women. The room where the lady of the house had her things (mostly female domestic tools like gear for sowing, weaving, etc.) and spent together with the other women in the house or her female guests, was called the gunaikeion. The room for the man of the house, his sons and other male family members and friends was the andron. These rooms, for strongly being among men or among women, were not to be trespassed. There are places in Greek literature where a man enters a gunaikeion (I haven't found a place in Greek literature where a woman enters an andron) are quite rare and mostly cause some shock or havoc in the story. Trespassing the special rooms for men or women was just not done. People even didn't really know what the room for the opposite sex looked like!

Now, I have to explain things, or else I get smacked in the head by the first basic Greek reader that comes around the corner and reads this. Of course, there ARE places in Greek literature, where women are together with men, like banquets and the famous symposia. We only have to open Plato's books to get a lot of this information. But we are dealing with a certain type of woman here. Mostly, they're not the kind of woman a Greek (in Plato's case, the Athenian) man would marry. These women are either priestesses who took a vow of celibacy, or they are very expensive prostitutes, the so called hetairai. So, either holy or naughty women were allowed into the andron and share the company of men. These women also had some broader action radius around town, but the price they had to pay for this was that they would never marry or lead the life which would make them into a respected citizen. For us, modern women of the 21st century, it's quite hard to understand that the ancient Greek woman got her respect and merits from only two things: being born into the right family to get citizenship and marry a citizen and then do nothing really important for the rest of your life....

Of course, for these women, being a wife and a mother was important and gave them their merits. They were important for the future of the city they were a citizen of. Priestesses were important, but they couldn't reach large numbers, because that wasn't very relevant to their function in daily life. Prostitutes were no citizens, they usually belonged to either the lowest levels of the city population or they were rich and luxurious and came from other cities, which they had left to seek fortune elsewhere. These people, male and female, were called metoikoi (metics/immigrants/immigrant workers). They could reach fortune and fame, but never become a citizen. Of course, both male and female metics found their way of becoming important persons, but this solely relied to their own capability.

Male and female culture/religion

Being so separated in daily life, both men and women developed their own special cultural, social and religious characteristics. There were specifics things, jobs and topics for both men and women and both groups mainly stuck to that. Even the art of making love was probed and developed among the own sexual group before making the cross over in the wedding night; at least, this was the way good citizens were supposed to do it. Often, in later ages, these practices have been too much misunderstood as the craving for or support of homosexuality. I think, the sexual try-outs among the own sexual group rather came from the separate way these groups functioned within ancient Greek society.

Advantages and disadvantages

Of course, sexual separation had its advantages and disadvantages. People, i.e. men and women, knew where they stood in life and what was expected from them. The man represented his family outside the house, made the money and was the leader of his family (so far so good in a masculine society). Inside the house, the woman was the boss and if her husband didn't live up to what was expected from him as a man, husband, father and family leader, she could make things very unpleasant or even hard for him. So it wasn't only: "the man is the boss and the woman is nothing"....If women were clever and sincere, they could be strong role models and be regarded highly and even praised for being so.