I often hear about how women in the ancient Greek society were treated as a lesser gender, often with little to no rights of property. I hear and read about how women are treated as little more then housewives who should just be quiet and get pregnant. (Now I'm not a historian, so my sources are probably very incorrect) Furthermore, there's the Greek sexuality, in which the men seem to take a central position. Why then, is the Greek goddess of love, beauty and sexuality female? Why is Athena female, if woman were considered to be inferior to men? Why is Artemis, goddess of the hunt, female, if hunting was a predominantly male activity?
In other words, how did the Greek society deal with, what seems to me, a weird double standard? How could they attribute hunting and wisdom to a female persona, but still consider all woman inferior?
Firstly most of the particularly anti-female trappings of ancient Greece originate from Athens. Though females weren't equal in any Greek society, there were some city-states that didn't have the same strict policies as Athens. Sparta for example, allowed females to run estates and own property. These more relaxed states may have viewed women more as 'different' rather than strictly inferior.
As for the pantheon, there are some examples of Greeks talking about the 'female' gods as female only in form, rather than actually female. For example, in Aeschylus' play 'The Furies' Athena describes herself as being solely 'of Zeus' and thus male, despite her female form. Thus the Greeks may have viewed the female gods as either substantively male or possibly a third gender.
Its also possible the gods, male and female, just don't follow the same rules as mortals. There are plenty of myths about how the separation between mortal and divine. Euripides' play 'the Bacchae' ends with Dionysius having the finished his hugely disproportionate revenge plot on the Theban royal family (essentially wiping out the lineage) the last surviving member asks Dionysius how he could go so far, and he just says, 'I'm a god and I can do whatever I please' (paraphrased). Dionysius demonstrates here that mortal rules are meaningless to him. Similarly mortal rules and cultural expectations of women would be irrelevant to female gods.
To add to the religious side of the question, there's a lot we don't know about how the Greek pantheon developed and evolved over time. There's a school of thought that believes it derives strongly from the Minoan belief systems (Myths linking Apollo with Crete, and more obscurely with the holy Labyrinth lead some to believe he may be a descendant of the Minoan Young God, for example), and it's very likely there is some influence. There's also a school of thought that believes it derives predominantly from Asia Minor (for example some myths of Dionysus' arrival), and yet another that believes it came from up North in successive waves of migration or sudden conquest in the so-called Dorian invasion. We're not even sure how big of an influence, if any, the Pelasgian religion had.
The most likely explanation is of course that it's all had influence on how their religion developed, we just don't know how or to what degree. The roles of the goddesses could easily have been defined before the development or spread of strict Athenian-style patriarchy. We do know the Minoans worshiped a Potnia Theron of some sort associated with trees and mountains, and frequently assumed to be the subject of the snake goddess figures.
Also, you mention Aphrodite. That's a bit of a special case that bears mention. Aphrodite was a fertility goddess, and fertility deities were very frequently considered female. The female is the one who carries the child and gives life through birth, and it's easy to see the parallels between mountains, soil, and a woman's uterus and growing belly during pregnancy. Aphrodite, Demeter, Persephone, as well as Isis, Ishtar, and Freyja all fall into this category.
I wanted to chime in to draw attention to the political and social side of the treatment of women in ancient Greece. The cliché that suggests that women had a tough time in ancient Greece is the case because the vast majority of our literary evidence from the time comes from Athenian sources, who, in comparison to other Greek city-states, were relatively hard on their women. Pomeroy writes that, in peace time, Athenian households expected to raise no more than one girl at a time. This was because Athenian fathers were expected to provide a dowry for each daughter, and to find them a suitable husband - usually a man in his 30's, when she was around the age of 12 to 14. In addition to this, the primary expectation of the woman in Athens was to remain indoors and raise children - Xenophon's Oeconomicus describes the gender roles of Athens extended from free citizens to slaves, and that freeborn Athenian women were expected to remain indoors and, yes, raise children. This was their sole task in terms of contribution to their city, if they were part of a rich family in Athens. Naturally of course, poor women had to contribute more actively to the household - repairing clothes, carding and spinning wool, even leaving the house to fetch water if they had no slaves - but the political / social expectations of rich Athenian women did not extend a great deal beyond raising heirs for the family unit. As such, they did not think of the gods in these terms, as they were above such mortal concerns.
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