Hello, dear steemians. In today's letter I will talk about the situation of women in Ancient Greece and its place the Oikos. You will wonder what an Oikos is, for this is a term that is equivalent to the word "house". In Ancient Greece the oikos was the set of goods and people that constituted the basic unit of society. In the polis the telestai, the oldest male, was in charge of guarding the oikos, this included his family that extended to several generations, in addition to wife and children and included the slaves.

The largest oikos included extensive exploitations worked by the slaves. These spaces represented mainly an autarchic economic and social unit, since it was the center around which life was organized and in it not only material needs were met, but also norms, values, duties, obligations, responsibilities, social relations. and communion with the gods.

The oikos was not only referred to the family, it was that it included all the staff of the house and its assets. Those who
ran the oikos were responsible for maintaining peace in the family and equitably distribute the goods.

Lacking the power woman in classical Athens, since she was only expected to be a good wife and good mother, she played a very important role in the Oiko.

The women fulfilled the function of endowing the oikos with descendants, since these would be the ideal heirs of the head of the family, kyrios and husband, this is who ultimately controls all household assets.

The inheritance of the oikos always passed into the hands of a male child, if it existed. Women, theoretically, could not own property, thus avoiding that, being dedicated to the creation of new oikos, there would come a time when they left their homes and the property attached to their oikos of origin would be dispersed.

In the Greek world the importance of oikonomia is known, that is, the art of administering the properties of oikos, and it can be affirmed that the economy was strongly integrated in the social and political aspects.

This concept ranged from economic issues such as the acquisition, production and management of goods to aspects related to the moral values necessary for the proper functioning of the oikos, its material and human elements.

On the economic-labor level, it is evident that in this period of history there was a clear sexual division of labor that translates into different productive spaces. Also with regard to work, the home was always associated with the feminine world.

For this reason, in antiquity the woman had been cataloged by her nature and had been relegated to the home, while the man was preparing to take care of the field, agora and of the trips to the city.

This brought as a consequence the economic division: commercial or domestic. The mercantile economy corresponded to the male public sphere, outside of the oikos, while the domestic economy was linked to the female sphere of the home.

Oikos manufactured fabrics, clothes, and any textile product from the domestic sphere, this being one of the jobs directly associated with women and was the most important contribution to the family economy.

Source

Many of these works can be seen represented in the vessels or in the stories of the time. Remember Penelope as a good lady of your home, knit and darn the shroud of her father-in-law while waiting for the return of her husband, Odysseus.

The wife, as head of the oikos, was also engaged in the storage and reservation of food products, as well as the control and distribution of the perishable goods of the house. He supervised the work of the slaves that he normally had as help for the domestic and productive tasks of the home; he trained them and tried to receive rewards or punishments according to their performance.

That is why this space was relegated to the woman, and practically there she exercised and she had all her power.