A bronze statue, likely of a Spartan woman. c. 500 BCE. (British Museum, London) image in the public domain.My sixth grade social studies classes are just finishing off a study of ancient Greece. One of the takeaways from our studies is that Spartan women had a better life than Athenian women.
Sparta didn't leave much historical documentation, so historians rely on Greek poets and historians to understand the lives of Spartan women. One Spartan who did leave records was Lycurgus, the Spartan to developed Sparta's legal system in the 7th century B.C. Lycurgus reorganized the political and social structure of the polis into the disciplined collective society that we commonly associate with Sparta. He included allowances for Spartan women that included a public education, the right to exercise and participate in athletic competitions, and the right to manage the money earned from their land. Spartan women were also allowed to appear in public and mingle with men. In the rest of the Greek world, women were largely confined to their own homes.
It occurred to me that one of the reasons that Spartan women had so much freedom was that their men were too busy with other things, namely war, to bother with micromanaging their women. This made me wonder: does the status of women rise when their men are busy waging war?
Sparta didn't leave much historical documentation, so historians rely on Greek poets and historians to understand the lives of Spartan women. One Spartan who did leave records was Lycurgus, the Spartan to developed Sparta's legal system in the 7th century B.C. Lycurgus reorganized the political and social structure of the polis into the disciplined collective society that we commonly associate with Sparta. He included allowances for Spartan women that included a public education, the right to exercise and participate in athletic competitions, and the right to manage the money earned from their land. Spartan women were also allowed to appear in public and mingle with men. In the rest of the Greek world, women were largely confined to their own homes.
It occurred to me that one of the reasons that Spartan women had so much freedom was that their men were too busy with other things, namely war, to bother with micromanaging their women. This made me wonder: does the status of women rise when their men are busy waging war?
This was certainly the case for American women during World War II. While their men were engaged in fighting in Europe, Africa and the Pacific, a large number of jobs, especially in munitions and manufacturing, opened to women. An example is the aviation industry. Before the war, just 1% of workers in aviation had been women. By 1943, a whopping 65% of the labor force was female. Granted, women did not have anything near pay parity during this period, but it was a start.
World War II wasn't the first time that opportunities for American women expanded because their men were at war. A similar experience happened during the Civil War. Not only did women find themselves in charge of keeping the home fires burning while the brother in blue fought the brother in gray, but they had to keep farms and businesses going. As men enlisted, two fields of endeavor, nursing and teaching, turned to women to fill the vacancies. The mother of Sarah McCoombs, the main character in my novel The Bent Reed, is determined that her daughter take advantage of this situation by training to become a teacher. Sarah, however, is interested in the healing properties of plants, especially the rapidly developing field of pharmaceuticals, which women had a significant role in developing.
I am not suggesting that women encourage wars so that they can get ahead while their men are off fighting. Now that the military is welcoming women into combat positions, this strategy wouldn't work anyway. And far more women are hurt by the ravages of war than are helped by the economic and social upheaval. But it is interesting that when the cat's away, the mice not only play, but thrive.
