Greek Gender Roles

In much the same way that a woman was not held responsible for acts of adultery,

Throughout history, the roles of women and men have always differed to some degree. In ancient Greece, the traditional roles were clear-cut and defined. Women stayed home to care for children and do housework while men left to work. This system of society was not too far off the hunter gatherer concept where women cared for the house and the men hunted. Intriguingly enough, despite the customary submissive role, women had a more multifaceted role and image in society as juxtaposed with the rather simple role men played. Morals for the two were also different. Men obviously had the upper hand with women being the traditional passive.

The Greek and Roman societies were a very patriarchal society. This is reflected throughout the myths in classical mythology. By looking at the many pieces of literature involving Greeks and Romans we will see that the roles women portrayed are very different from women’s roles in today’s society. Although there are a few similarities to women’s roles in today’s society, their roles are more like those women in the past. We can see this by looking at the qualities of Greek and Roman female gods and looking at the roles women play in the myths.

Greek Woman was considered to be submissive which means once you are married to a woman, then she is in your full control. The woman in ancient was not allowed to own the property, in one way we can also relate that the woman had fewer rights than the man because they could hardly express their feeling. The woman was not considered as the citizens.

Women are often thought of as the weaker, more vulnerable of the two sexes. Thus, women’s roles in literature are often subdued and subordinate. In Chinua Achebe’s Things Fall Apart, women are repressed by an entrenched structure of the social repression. Women suffer great losses in this novel but, also in certain circumstances, hold tremendous power. Achebe provides progressively changing attitudes towards women’s role. At first glance, the women in Things Fall Apart may seem to be an oppressed group with little power and this characterization is true to some extent. However, this characterization of Igbo women reveals itself to be prematurely simplistic as well as limiting, once

In the modern world women work, vote, run for office and the list goes on. In most aspects, women are equal to men. However, this was not always the case. In centuries past, women were not viewed as being equal to men socially, intellectually, or politically and were thought incapable of accomplishing anything of value. Consequently, many cultures held the view that women were possessions whose only purpose was to be subservient to men. The view of women as mere objects is evident in various works of literature throughout the ages. Two classic works of literature that exemplify this are The Thousand and One Nights and Murasaki Shikibu’s The Tale of

   In Chinua Achebe's novel Things Fall Apart, the Ibo people's patriarchal society has a strict system of behavioral customs according to gender. These customs strongly restrict the freedom of Ibo women and help to reinforce generation after generation the notion that Ibo men are superior to the women of their tribe.

In the world of Ancient Greece, a large array of deities were worshipped. Each god had their own forms of identification in which they used to express themselves. This includes things such as personality, style, sexuality, and many other things. One of these forms of expression was gender. The Greeks seemed to focus more on the two typical genders, which are male and female. Some Greek gods seemed to play into certain gender roles, but others portrayed traits of the opposite sex. In this paper, I will be analysing the possibility that the Greeks believed the female and male genders were closely connected and that is why many of the gods are described with blended aspects of gender.

In our culture, men and women are expected to act in certain ways during a sexual encounter, based on their gender. During a sexual encounter, men are expected to be dominant and active, while women are expected to be submissive and passive. The existence of gender roles has been a constant theme throughout humanity. In Ancient Greece, sexual gender roles that resemble modern sexual gender roles existed, but were not a 1:1 comparison with what we have today.

Ancient Greek society had its own ideas and values on gender and sexual norms that were reflected by the Olympian gods. These reflections often had small differences that separated the Olympian gods from humans. Other times there was little reflection between the Olympain gods and Ancient Greek society. Some of these reflections include the values of parthenoi, unmarried women; pederasty, a type of male homosexuality; and lastly moicheia, illicit sexual relationships. These reflections from Olympian gods to Greek society show how these values were important to be included in religious tales.

-At the beginning of Season 4, Naomi Clark, one of the main female characters in Beverly Hill 90210, New Generation TV show, is angry with another girl named Holly because she previously humiliated her. Holly found a letter Naomi’s ex boyfriend Max wrote to her and use it to destabilize her. During the “Greek Games” event at their high school, Naomi discovered that Holly is the captain of the adverse team, but she is determined to win the game.

From the role of the guileful seducer, to the dutiful housewife, to the furious feminist, women were a central point of Ancient Greek society. Although they were declined legal status and held no political voice, the roles they played in their society were undeniably important. The women of the society functioned as the conferrer of life, established a family which was held as the center of Greek life, and managed the home. Women of that time may have been seen and thought to be have little worth than a man of that time, nevertheless their unquestionable power and influence in society cannot be gone unnoticed. As we see the main character a.k.a the protagonist Medea, in the book Medea.

In the novel, Things Fall Apart, Chinua Achebe presents a true reflection of the conventional view of women and their roles in the many societies in Africa and across the world. Achebe uses a combination of various writing techniques and literary devices to effectively bring out the theme of the role of women in the novel. The author goes a mile ahead to highlight contextual issues surrounding the usual discussion of the role of women in the society. Inasmuch as most scholars focus on the presentation of women as being weak and subjugated group, the story contains bits of their contrasting depiction as being important, influential and more powerful than even men. Even so, the general perception about the overall position and role of women in the society remains as being weak, inferior and secondary to men. Women in the Igbo community are tagged with a weak and fragile label despite playing crucial roles and occupying imperative positions that define their fundamental customs and traditions.

The role of a women in society has overall transformed tremendously along with the development of this world. For example, within the American society, women’s rights have expanded to the extent of being able to vote for who will rule the country or even possibly become the person who rules the country. Although the American society has somewhat promoted and since sustained the growth of a woman’s role in that particular society, that does not necessarily indicate the worth a women will receive will be the same respect in other cultures around the world or hold that specific value, as demonstrated within the African society. Women are viewed lower on hierarchy of society of importance in Africa even though without the presence of women the village would quite literally, fall apart. Chinua Achebe is an author that was born and raised in a village of Nigeria. And due to that background Chinua is able to understand the culture of Africa better than the general majority. Since he does have that better understanding of the Nigerian culture, he became determined and made it his own personal duty to share the cultural differences with the world, by reflecting that in his writing, specifically in the novel Things Fall Apart. In this novel, Chinua represents women in the Igbo society as lesser individuals but with overwhelming influence of the daily life within the village. Although Chinua portrays women as being of less value, does that symbolize

Gender is the social and self-identified categorization of people in a specific society. This refers to their behaviors, actions, and general role that the play in their society. Sexuality, however, is the identity of sexual relations based on whom you’re attracted to (9/5). For example, Ancient Greeks held men at a higher status than women. Education was a huge part of the Greek culture but, women were not a part of this. Liberal education was education one needed in order to be a free person so, women who weren’t educated, which was most, weren’t considered free. The roles that they played were based upon their gender, Men were educated workers while women were uneducated and confined. They used gender in order to create hierarchies and this progressed into social order in their society. They also used sexuality do this, but it’s a bit more complicated. In Ancient Greece, Greek men would have sex with younger men. This was all very regulated and that’s why it is so difficult to establish a specific sexuality. “Older men and younger men shared sexual relations under very scripted circumstances,” although these relationships were publicized, homosexuality wasn’t entirely accepted (9/26). The nature of these relationships was partly educational, partly sexual. A young boy, depicted in Greek art without a beard, would “mentor” an older man, depicted in Greek art with a beard. The older man (erastes) would teach the young boy (eromenos) life experiences, how to be a man, and