On Research About Athenian Women's Situation In Classical Age

The concept that man is the center of society has hardly changed since the establishment of patriarchal system though man has experienced kinds of society form. Men have dominated the world, ruled in history, dictated culture in a society in which the man is the focus and characteristic of dictatorship by the man. A society of this kind labels men's oppression over women in all aspects of life, what's more, the more developed the society is, the thicker the binding over women. This essay tries to analyze the status of upper-class and middle-class women in family, society and laws in ancient Athens by studying views on women in man's ideology. It is divided into five parts:The first part is the preface. It introduces the present national and foreign study conditions of women's history, especially the study conditions of Greek women history and the primary purpose why the essay is written.The second one begins with ideology, discusses the evolution of Greek views about women since Crete civilization and especially emphasizes on the Athenian views about women in ancient time. In this way, we canconclude that with the development of society, the male's views on the female becomes lower and lower.The third part analyzes women's status in family in three aspects such as establishment, abdication of arriage and fidelity of women. When it came to ancient Ahtens, women became slaves to their husband's sexual desires, tools for reproduction and obedient housekeepers.The fourth part draws a conclusion that women have no substantial political, lawful rights. They were negative citizens without any positive rights even in ancient Athens which claimed to be a most democratic society.The last part concludes that women's social status was not only determined by their contribution to society but also by views about women in social ideology in a certain historical period.