Speaking specifically about the role of women in the military Aristotle says this, "Yet even here the influence of the Spartans" women has been very harmful. This was demonstrated when Laconia was invaded by the Thebans: instead of playing a useful part they caused more confusion than the enemy" (Aristotle, The Politics, 1269b35-38). Unlike Plato's supposition about women, Aristotle feels that women are not only inferior in strength to men but also inferior in the powers of the mind as a result of their inception and roles in reproduction. .
The male and the female differ from each other in the possession of an ability and in the lack of an ability. The male is able to concoct, formulate and to ejaculate the sperm which contains the origin of the form [of the being to be born]-I do not mean here the material element out of which it is born resembling its parent but the initiating formative principle whether it acts within itself or within another. The female, on the other hand, is that which receives the seed but is unable to formulate or to ejaculate it. Aristotle, On the Generation of Animals, 765b6-19.
This is the reason for their shortcomings in the man's world of politics and war, reproduction as a reflection of societal and political roles.
Plato, like his student, also sights some biological reasons as why women are inferior to men. Plato relegates women to the physical realm of begetting children, that being their main purpose.
Those whose creative instinct is physical have recourse to women, and show their love in this way believing the by begetting children they can secure an immortal and blessed memory hereafter forever; but there are some whose creative desire is of the soul and who long to beget spiritually, not physically, the progeny which it is the nature of the soul to create and bring to birth. If you ask what the progeny is, it is wisdom and virtue in general- Plato, Symposium, 208c.
