ABSTRACT
Women in Athens possessed no active political rights. They could neither speak nor vote
in the ekklesia, the citizen assembly, nor could they attend its meetings. Further they were
unable to hold any administrative or executive position within the secular organization of
the state (including that of juror in the popular courts).1 In the Greek sense of the word,
they were not citizens-in Aristotle’s definition, participants in the offices and honours of
These general disabilities are so well known that they scarcely require elaboration; nor
is there anything peculiarly Athenian about the exclusion of women from politics. No
Greek state ever enfranchised women, and for the most part the general participation of
women in politics has had to wait until the twentieth century. Yet if the mere fact of
women’s exclusion from politics is not in itself particularly noteworthy (since it is but
another example of what, historically, has been almost universally the case), the
importance of that exclusion within the context of Athenian society must still be stressed,
for ‘polities’ in Athens denoted something much more extensive than, and rather different
from, what is understood by the term today.
