Female agency is a complex matter and I cannot even pretend to address all aspects here, nor will I pretend to be an expert on this question. I will focus mainly on money and general mobility as the factors I’d consider most important. I hope this helps.

First, it is important to note that our knowledge of Greek law is unfairly dominated by the relative “abundance” of sources for Athenian law. Athenian law treated women harshly, but may not have been representative of “the Greek world”. The extant law of Gortyn, for instance, treats women quite differently in some respects (for instance in cases of sexual assault) and the normative potential of women in the lower classes to act on their own behalf was probably always greater than that of daughters of wealthy families; agency also always increased with age.

Fundamentally, the increased mobility of the Hellenistic world caused stricter, traditional, local norms to soften (as may be familiar in the form of Perikles’ restrictive citizenship law). With mobility and more monetary, less land-based forms of wealth came the need to compromise in marriage contracts and ensure, in the interest of the wife’s family, that her property was protected to a greater extent, allowing her more economic freedom as a result. This mobility was due, among other things, to the kingdoms, the infusion of wealth they caused, the banking systems provided, and the professionalization and “internationalisation” of soldiers, engineers, doctors, performers, athletes, etc. that they fostered. As the Hellenistic world made the Greek cities wealthier, the number of festivals they held also increased, including night festivals, which allowed women more legitimate opportunities to leave the household. In the late Hellenistic period, women’s associations with not purely cultic functions also began to appear, along with their own financial administration, providing another space, in which women could have their own social circles and financial independence.

Another factor that contributes to the idea of a revolution is the increase in epigraphic culture in the Greek cities and the proliferation of honorific inscriptions. Elite women who controlled property are more tangible in this medium than before, because they engaged in the giving of benefactions to cities and temples, paying for sacrifices, buildings, games etc. In return, they were granted public honours or left dedicatory inscriptions, allowing us greater insight into their background. Funerary stele of elite women also show a greater emphasis on learning, with book rolls appearing for instance, so the value of educated daughters may generally have increased, though this was surely also a side-effect of increasing wealth.

Due to the revitalisation of monarchy in the Hellenistic world, and potentially the influence of Near Eastern (e.g. Achaemenid) models of female (elite) agency, the role of the Hellenistic queens, such as Stratonike, Apama or Laodike, probably also played a part in this process of relaxing the limits imposed upon female agency, since they were experienced as powerful actors in politics not only among the elite, but also at ground level. The queens appear not only to have used their familial connections to conduct politics, but also to have supported more familial aspects of life through benefactions (such as providing dowries for poor women, supporting cults new couples sacrificed to, marking their own agency by means of gifts to prominent sanctuaries such as Delos, etc.). This in turn granted the familial sphere more prominence in the world and the queens provided models other elite women could follow.

That said, it is important to remember that not everything changed for the better. There were conservative moves as well, for instance the renewal of institutions for the control of decorum and decency (gynaikonomoi) in some cities, notably Athens, and the insistence on traditional rules especially in cities that had enough citizens and wealth enough to do so. Even in Ptolemaic Egypt women generally held very little land, the true mark of elite independence in Antiquity, and that is where their legal standing was probably best. Even in relation to just land dealings women really occur only occasionally, though there are, as always, exceptional cases, such as Eirene, who acted as an entrepreneur in her own right despite being a married woman. Overall, the level of women’s engagement in the economy on largely their own terms was nevertheless probably higher in the Hellenistic world, especially in Egypt, than in Classical Greece. Since women were still subject to kyrios approval for entering into substantial contracts under Greek law (as in Athenian law, though not under Egyptian), widows may have generally enjoyed the most freedom of action. This approval may, however, have become a mere formality at least in some cases.

Finally, a general word of caution may be in order, since the wealth of papyrological evidence from Egypt that attests such female agency in concrete detail may be skewing the general view of how much women’s agency grew in the Hellenistic period, since Egypt had different legal traditions that created a second set of expectations Greek norms had to engage with. Egyptian evidence is thus not necessarily representative of the Hellenistic world, but comparable material does not really exist elsewhere. Our other written material mainly illuminates the world of elite, propertied women, so while it seems that their constraints relaxed on average – though certainly not everywhere – it is difficult to say the same for the lower classes; providing an actual statistical assessment of this question is prohibited by the material.

Overall, I would therefore hardly speak of a revolution. The changes also hardly stemmed from any sort of structural awareness of an injustice that deserved to be rectified. The changes were a result of increasing wealth (especially in the form of coined money), greater mobility, and the ideological and political superstructure of the Hellenistic kingdoms.

Some reading:

Chaniotis, Angelos, Age of Conquests, London 2018.

Pomeroy, Sarah B. Women in Hellenistic Egypt: from Alexander to Cleopatra, Detroit 1990.

The paper by Gillian Ramsey in Coşkun, Altay; McAuley, Alex (eds.), Seleukid royal women: creation, representation and distortion of Hellenistic queenship in the Seleukid empire, Stuttgart 2016.

James, Sharon L.; Dillon, Sheila (eds.), A Companion to Women in the Ancient World, Malden, MA 2012, esp. part 3.

Thompson, D., “The Hellenistic Family”, in: G. Bugh (Ed.), The Cambridge Companion to the Hellenistic World, Cambridge 2006, 93-112.