The Role of Women in Mesopotamia and Greece

Writing about the analysis of gender discrimination at the times of early civilizations in ancient Greece and Mesopotamia requires taking into consideration of how civilization emerged in these specific areas in the first place. With this in mind, civilization appeared after the creation of cities and it is learning as a scientific sphere how different societies and cultures developed throughout numbers of millennia. The issue has grown in importance, why while societies are getting developed but the attitude towards women is maintained such a way, they are not supposed to be the participant of decision-making processes. Even the starting center of civilization which is Mesopotamia cannot respond to distributing the equality between genders and it really sounds odd. Similarly, after a million years, regardless of the civilization of Greek culture too, the people are doing the same thing, degrading women. In the first instance, it seems these civilizations play a great role in the history of the world within their architecture, arts, and a bunch of inventions, and they do, but the problem is all about domination of men. This paper presents how Mesopotamian and Greek civilizations are different or similar in behavior towards women.

To illustrate, the role of women in Mesopotamian civilization was as important as the role of men, even it can be claimed more than that. Along the wall, women in Mesopotamian society was a mother, wife and the person who was responsible for all housework. Additionally, they should take care of other members of the family. For that reason, girls at an early age were staying at home, except the royal family’s daughter, and learning how to be a good mother, cook, and wife. At the same time, boys were attending schools and here the inequality shows up. As it is known, Mesopotamian society was polytheistic, so, if a family wanted to have a priest family member, they would sell their daughter to the temples, in extreme cases, girls were part of secular or sacred prostitution, and slavery. It is so complexed that they had goddesses, but the humiliation of women was there. Furthermore, the marriage was also constructed by the fathers of the girls, again they did not have any right to choose their future husbands. This was so likely an agreement because both sides were arranged to pay a dowry or a bride price. It is true that Sumerian women had more rights like being scribes, judges than later Mesopotamian women. Because of patriarchy, the domination of men was getting stronger than ever. A divorce procedure was also in the favor of men, to be sure if there was a little problem with women, they were ultimately wrong, and it was the reason for the divorce. Admittedly, it was the case that women could also make an appointment for a divorce if there was adultery or mistreatment. However, the rule was so strict towards women in the sense that if there was a claim about adultery of women, they were judged to the death, but to the men, this rule was so soft because only payment for adultery in comparison to the death penalty without question was so unjust.

Highlighting women’s role in Greece civilization is also important to find similarities and differences between two classical civilizations in behavior towards females. As in Mesopotamia, it was not so different while giving rights to women in Greece. Underestimating women was part of the structure of government. Even though the democratic government was already familiar to Greeks, participation right in voting or any other decision-making processes belonged to men, not to women. Adjacent to, women could not go to the ekklesia to represent their thoughts or ideas. Likely, in Mesopotamia, a woman had more burden than men, such as bringing up children, taking care of husband and being under the obedience of him. A horrible fact about Athens who was one of the two important poleis, meaning a group of free men who builds a town or any inhabited place, was leaving the baby girls when they were born. At this point, male domination was more brutal in Greece civilization than Mesopotamian, especially during the period of Athens. Ironically, Spartans had not differentiated offspring whether it was a girl or a boy, because it was a military city-state, women were equally important as men. Then, Spartan women had more freedom than Athenian women, they ran the family farm and gave orders to the helots or slaves if there was a need. It has been shown in resources that girls in Greece attended schools in the opposite of Mesopotamian civilization, but the final aim was the same — to be ready for being a future wife or mother. Moreover, the marriage system in Greece looked like a Mesopotamian marriage procedure, the young girls could not choose their husbands, it was a duty of their fathers. One more time, Greece civilization humiliated women by keeping silence against men’s searches for love outside of marriage, in other words, adultery. In spite of all these oppressions, Mesopotamian and Greece civilizations advanced at one point when giving the right to women to have their own property.

Importantly, when I was trying to find resources about this topic, one information took my attention. For Greek philosopher Plato, same-sex lovers were more blessed than a regular couple love relationship. After claiming this, Plato opposed himself. Still, what reason was to make him think in that way. From the perspective of that period, it was somewhat obvious. In the explanation of this, even in sexual relationship men were degrading women to have relationships not with other women, but with other men. Another interesting fact, male domination of the period was not only over women, it was also over lower-class men. Needless to mention, it sounds irritating, why the sexual relationship should be a tool in the hands of men to rule others. Of equal importance, the act of sexual relationship between superordinate and subordinate social classes was structured as a hierarchical order which indicates inequality. Therefore, the sexual dominance of a higher-class male partner over lower-class female partner was one of the significant ways to undermine women in the Greek civilization. Conversely, in Mesopotamian civilization, this type of humiliation towards women was not experienced after all. Probably, this difference was related to two different belief systems, cultures or the way of development processes.

On the whole, the oppression of women in Mesopotamian and Greek civilizations has apparent impacts in the present century. As a matter of fact, most of the women are housekeepers and sacrifices their carriers for the sake of their families, to be specific, for their children. Did something change from a historical period? When the term civilization becomes the topic, everyone looks upon changes but what types of changes. It should be wrong if successes of both civilizations were downgraded, on the other hand, the attitude towards the female members of societies should be criticized. Having evaluated Mesopotamian and Greek civilizations separately, I now do not wonder about the existence of gender inequalities and oppression towards women in the 21st century. By the same token, the domination of men in contemporary time is also an illustration of these two great civilizations. In view of all that has been mentioned so far, one may suppose civilization is not just a single term, it was a boundary between generations, it is, and it will be.