Question

this artifact reveals the restrictions women had to endure in the olympic games. review the different restrictions for women versus men in greek athletics and discuss the following:

how did these restrictions reflect the role of women in greek society.

how does what you learnef about the restrictions on womens roles in greek society influence your thinking about the issues or restrictions women face today.

Answer 1

Ans :

One of the main themes of sport in ancient Greece is that of separation of the genders. The genders were divided and the society emphasized different traits in both males and females. A great statesman of Greece wrote on the female gender saying that "Fame will be great...for the woman whose reputation for excellence or blame is least known among males." Instead of encouraging females to participate and attend athletic events, women were extremely discouraged to participate in sports and extreme laws were in effect to stop women from attending the Olympics.

Adult women (those who were married) were prohibited from attending the Olympics by the laws of Ellis (the city that hosted the games). If a female participant was caught in the Olympic stadium, the city of Ellis stated that they were to be thrown into the river from Mount Typaion. (This law while harsh and possibly lethal was never recorded as being enforced, and in fact, there is a story of a women who had violated the Olympic game’s law and social norm.

Not every woman was barred from the Olympics though, as maidens and prostitutes were allowed to attend (in order to facilitate these women in finding a male as a husband or a lover). There was also a big exception to the priestess of Demeter. Even though the priestess may have been married, she was allowed to attend the event at a place of honor (it seems to be both because of her position as priestess and due to the location of her temple which was at the center of the stadium seating).

No women were allowed to participate in the sporting events of the Olympics. To ensure that a male was competing, athletes would be nude when they participated in the games. There was one really big exception to this rule which allowed one woman to not only participate in the games but win twice!

When women practiced sport and did athletic activity, they were subject to different rules and procedures than that of the men. One of the more noticeable differences would have been the required clothing. Men were allowed to, encouraged, and even bound to (if they were competing at the Olympics) do athletic activities in the nude. Women were required to wear chitons during such activities.

This idea is exemplified by one major discourse found in Plato’s Republic. In logically inferring that men and women should have the same educations, one speaker in the discourse brings up a big problem in this notion of equal education through the example of the gymnasiums. To suggest the idea of equal education is good, but in practice it would bring ridicule due to the thought that if women were treated as equals in sport than “the most ridiculous thing of all will be the sight of women naked in the palaestra, exercising with the men, especially when they are no longer young; they certainly will not be a vision of beauty.”

In classical Athens, women were considered to be part of the oikos (a term related to the concept of family, family property and the house) headed by a male patriarch. They were excluded from the demos (the mass of the common people who could exercise legal and political rights). Most thinkers of those times supported this gendered segregation. In his book Politics, Aristotle stated that women were “utterly useless and cause more confusion than the enemy”. Women’s roles were restricted to the household and family. No woman ever acquired citizenship in ancient Athens and hence women were excluded from Athenian democracy both in principle and in practice.

The Heraean Games, dedicated to goddess Hera, the queen of the Olympian gods and Zeus’ wife, was the first official women’s athletic competition to be held in the Olympic stadium at Elis. The games, which occurred in the 6th century BC, were probably held in the Olympic year itself, prior to the men’s games.

Initially, the Heraean Games only consisted of foot races. The champions of the events were rewarded with olive crowns and meat from the animal sacrificed to Hera. They also got the right to dedicate statues or portraits to Hera – winners would inscribe their names on the columns of Hera’s temple. The only recorded victor of the foot races is the mythical Chloris, Pelops’ niece who was also said to be Zeus’ granddaughter.

Pausanias describes female athletic appearances in that “their hair hangs down, a tunic reaches to a little above the knee, and they bare the right shoulder as far as the breast.” This difference of clothing seems to stem from societal appreciations of male beauty over female beauty of the time. In fact, to suggest that were to do athletic events in the same fashion as males (nude) would seem absurd to the people of females Ancient Greece.

We cannot ascertain what societal changes led to the Greeks establishing separate games for women or whether the Heraean Games were only a temporary easing of restrictions on women. However, most historians suggest that it could be due to the rise of Roman influence in the Hellenic peninsula. In Rome, daughters of wealthy families freely participated in men’s festivals and athletic competitions.

Young Spartan girls received the same education as their male counterparts, rarely married before the age of 20 and possibly even took part in the Gymnopaedia or the ‘Festival of Nude Youths’. Perhaps in it unsurprising that a majority of the participants of the Heraean Games were Spartan women.

Sources also show that besides the Heraea and the Spartan women, sport was still somewhat prevalent in Ancient Greece. Homer’s Odyssey and Xenophon’s Symposium describe women playing with balls, driving chariots, swimming, and wrestling. Running, as the Heraea tested, was also very prevalent. While there may have been societal pressures and divisions in sport due to gender that hindered an Ancient Greek woman from engaging in athletic (see quote above), women in ancient Greece still did many physical activities. Sparta women were an exception in the Ancient Greek times, but the majority of women still did some type of sport. While what they did was different and lessened in intensity in comparison to males, Ancient Greek women did have experience in sport. In addition, while the Olympics were denied to them by the threat of death (with the exception of the Kyniska and her horses actually winning Olympic events), women in Greece had other outlets (like the Heraea).

Ans : Women in the ancient Greek world had few rights in comparison to male citizens. Unable to vote, own land, or inherit, a woman’s place was in the home and her purpose in life was the rearing of children. This, though, is a general description, and when considering the role of women in ancient Greece one should remember that information regarding specific city-states is often lacking, is almost always from male authors, and only in Athens can their status and role be described in any great detail. Neither are we sure of the practical and everyday application of the rules and laws that have survived from antiquity. We do know that Spartan women were treated somewhat differently than in other states.

Despite great strides made by the international women’s rights movement over many years, women and girls around the world are still married as children or trafficked into forced labor and sex slavery. They are refused access to education and political participation, and some are trapped in conflicts where rape is perpetrated as a weapon of war. Around the world, deaths related to pregnancy and childbirth are needlessly high, and women are prevented from making deeply personal choices in their private lives. Human Rights Watch is working toward the realization of women’s empowerment and gender equality—protecting the rights and improving the lives of women and girls on the ground.

Expert Views: What is the biggest challenge facing women?

1. From violence and sexual abuse to gender pay gaps and restrictive reproductive rights, women and girls continue to face obstacles in achieving equality.

2. Women will need to wait 202 years before they earn the same as men and have equal job opportunities if current the rate of change stays the same, according to the World Economic Forum’s 2018 Global Gender Gap report.

3. Abortion laws are also under scrutiny in countries around the globe.

4. As Friday marks International Women’s Day, the Thomson Reuters Foundation asked a select group of women and campaigners what they see as the biggest challenges

5. The biggest challenge for women in the 21st century revolves around the issue of choice – the freedom for women to choose who they become. We must support women to unleash the power to propel them to achieve that goal.

6. The biggest challenge for women is creating equal opportunities for boys and girls and that starts with education. About 130 million girls globally are still unschooled and for many others, even the physical journey to school can put their lives at risk.

7. One of the biggest challenges that we face as women is the stereotype and the societal perception imposed on us that we have to be a certain way to be a real woman

8. The rise of the right. The wave of national populism that we are seeing from the United States, to Brazil, from Hungary to Poland. These are movements that are about establishing traditional, patriarchal models, rolling back women’s reproductive rights, pushing women out of workplaces and back into the home and to protect men’s jobs.

9. “The upside is that it is inspiring ever more people, particularly women, to step forward to become activists and to understand that progress is not linear and women’s rights is always hard won and must always be protected and we always have to keep battling to extend them.

Major Issues Facing Women Today

Women are involved in all parts of society, but some matters affect and touch women more than others. From the power of the women's vote to reproductive rights and the pay gap, let's take a look at a few of the major issues that modern women face.

--Poverty, Hunger, and Homelessness.

--The Continuing Gender Wage Gap.

--Violence Against Women.

--Continuing Efforts to Whittle Down Roe v. Wade and Women’s Reproductive Rights.

--Inadequate Maternal and Infant Health Care.

--The Absence of Laws Mandating Paid Sick and Parental Leave

--Reasonable Accommodations for Pregnant Women

--The Lack of Affordable and Competent Child Care

--The Treatment of Women in Prison

--Human Trafficking/Sex Slavery

--The Severe Continued Under-Representation of Women in Political Life

--Discrimination in Academia. The higher in terms of faculty rank, salary, prestige, and status—the fewer are the women

--Under-Representation in the Justice System: As Prosecutors, Judges, and Police Officers

--Inadequate Representation Among Those Who Run Our Top Corporations and Serve on Corporate Boards

--Inadequate Representation and Unequal Pay for Actors, Writers, Directors, and Producers in the Entertainment Industry

--Lack of Health Insurance

--ERA and CEDAW

So, while women have come a long way in the last many centuries and years—they still have a very long way to go.

In thinking about the progress we’ve achieved and the problems that still remain, I can’t say it any better than an old African American slave preacher whom Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., quoted in a 1959 speech on race relations:

Lord, we ain’t what we want to be.
We ain’t what we ought to be.
We ain’t what we gonna be.
But, thank God, we ain’t what we was.