Women in ancient Sparta their wealth. He attributed the state's precipitous fall during his lifetime, from being the master of Greece to a second-rate power in less than 50 years, to the fact that Sparta had become a gynocracy whose women were intemperate and loved luxury. All Spartan women, not just the richest, would have taken advantage of helot labour to perform the domestic tasks that elsewhere in Greece would have fallen to free women. Activities such as weaving which were considered women's work elsewhere in Greece were not considered fit for free women in Sparta. Therefore, women were more preoccupied with governance, agriculture,
Underclass reference to conditions of social/economic/political structure) to a behavioral term (in other words, defining the underclass in reference to rational choice and/or in reference to a subculture of poverty). Gans suggests that the word "underclass" has become synonymous with impoverished blacks that behave in criminal, deviant, or "just non-middle-class ways". Loïc Wacquant deploys a relatively similar critique by arguing that "underclass" has become a blanket term that frames urban blacks as behaviorally and culturally deviant. Wacquant notes that underclass status is imposed on urban blacks from outside and above them (e.g., by journalists, politicians, and academics), stating that "underclass" is