Sparta is my favorite historical paradox.
Caveat, much of this is a more modern within the last few years, understanding of Sparta.
Sparta is this odd mix of staunchly conservative (for ancient Greece) and somewhat modern progressive.
Spartan women held massive power in the country. The way Spartan property rights worked is the wife would inherit the land, owned the land, and was expected to maintain the land. The men were expected to go off and die and the Spartan government needed the land worked and farms producing to feed the country. They couldn't afford constant land turn over and figuring out who owns what, so women owned the property. A very practical point of view.
Where this gets kind of wild is Spartan law kind of prevented people from being unmarried, so husband dies, wife inherits all the land, wife remarried, and Spartan men obviously had their own land from the gov't and their birthright; guess who goes off and dies in war again, Wife inherits all that land. At certain points in Spartan history a handful of women owned I believe up to 80% of actual Spartan land (this is land defined in the classic homeland of Sparta, there was more land on the peninsula).
This is where some of you think, "well Sparta is a monarchy so what does it matter if they own the land (and have massive wealth)" and youd be wrong. Sparta in practice was as much of a monarchy as modern England is (Sparta had 2 kings, but only 1 would "rule" at a time) Sparta in function is very much like a democratic republic. They had a congress style organization, a senate like organization, and a 3rd elder organization that led the whole show and worked as tie breakers. All day to day functions went through these groups, the kings had little power. They sat on the final elder council. During times of war, that's when they would be "in control". But that control extended to the conducting of the war. The king on campaign would tell the other king (not always 2 were alive) and that king would make sure Sparta bent to the need of the campaign. But Sparta wasn't always on campaign and if you are aware of the movie 300, it wasn't so simple for a king to just declare war.
All of that said, guess who the elder council would listen to. These women who owned massive amounts of land and could easily sway the country.
I also find the disconnect with the report of their "slavery" system and the function of it to be at ends. But that can be another post.
