Ancient Greece was a patriarchal society, and most women had few rights or little power. Plato, for example, believed that while women were strong in the emotional realm, their minds were weak--hence women had to be protected by a male guardian.
According to the textual record, women had to remain at home--women seen on the streets were prostitutes.
Art historians divide Ancient Greece into three periods: archaic, classical and Hellenistic. Archaic Greece lasts from the end of the Aegean Dark Ages and the birth of ancient Greek civilization (800 BCE) until the Persian Wars in 480 BCE.
Classical Greece dates from the end of the Persian Wars and the advent of Athens as the most powerful and culturally productive Greek city-state in the area. Hellenistic Greece dates from the death of Alexander the Great in 323 BCE to the takeover of the Greek heartlands by the Roman empire in 146 BCE.
The archaic (pre-classical) Greeks made many statues of men and women, called "kouros" and "kore," respectively. Both male and female figures have what's called the "archaic smile," a sort of stiff half-smile. However, as opposed to male kouros statues, which are nude, female kore are always shown with thick, body-hiding drapery.
Art historians and archaeologists are not sure what exactly the kouros and kore represent.
Much of the art of the ancient Greeks--or at least, that which remains--is religious in nature, and there are many statues of Greek goddesses. The most famous, perhaps, of these sculptures is the statuary at the Acropolis of Athens. The Acropolis is a temple district, and its main building is the Parthenon, erected in honor of the goddess Athena.
On the pediment sculpture depicting the birth of Athena, a sculptural arrangement of three other Greek goddesses is particularly famous. In these statues, the drapery acts not to hide the body (as it does in kore statues) but to showcase the perfect curves of the goddesses' figures.
The Aphrodite of Milos is one of the most famous examples of Greek sculpture of women. Made between 130 and 100 BCE, the Aphrodite of Milos--commonly known as the Venus de Milo--is particularly famous for its subtle eroticism--the drapery, hung loosely around the figure's hips reveals little but looks like it is about to reveal much. The eroticism of the figure demonstrates the sculptor's interest in emotion--not common in classical Greek art but an important facet of the later Hellenistic period.