Womens rights in ancient times

In ancient times, women’s rights was a complicated thing. However, I will be focusing on two cities different views on this subject. I will focus on women in Athens and Sparta.
Spartan women where well educated and treated with the same respect as men while Athenian women where not educated (with acceptations for the Hetaerae or high class women) and treated with very little respect.
There is a fairly simple reason for the Greeks, having bent a very advanced society, did not treat women with the same rights as men. They didn’t feel a need to. And those who did feel a need to change didn’t have the power to make those changes in society. And since the ones who had power in Athens where men who saw no flaw in the treat women like property plan, not much was ever changed in women’s rights there. But then one must ask oneself, what about the Spartans? Why where they better with women’s rights? The answer lies in their heritage. One theory about the Spartan women is that they are the remnants of the Amazons, a race of warrior women. This could explain the Spartan’s respect for women.
Now for how this relates to beauty, I will talk of how I think art from these two cultures depicted women.

Athens: short, in the background, not very colorful.
Sparta: medium height or tall, up front, as colorful as the men.

Bibliography

http://www.mnsu.edu/emuseum/prehistory/aegean/culture/womenofathens.html
http://www.mnsu.edu/emuseum/prehistory/aegean/culture/womenofsparta.html
http://www.mnsu.edu/emuseum/prehistory/aegean/amazons/amazonwho.html