One can also ask, however, what roles women played. To maintain a male warrior culture, especially when mercenaries were sent to distant lands, Sparta had to allow its women far greater rights and responsibilities than other Greek lands. Holland maintained its empire because women assumed new responsibilities on farms and in counting houses. Conquests can also result in the subordination of the conqueror's women. Arabic women of Muhammad's time and of the early Islamic jihads had a much higher standing than subsequent generations, who suffered both Persianization (or subjection to older, patriarchal practices of the eastern Mediterranean) and such an influx of captive female slaves that the value of all women dropped. After recent wars in the Balkans and East Africa in which rape of women has been a systematic weapon of ethnic cleansing, it may be appropriate in some classes to discuss the history of rape, of the transition from it being an accepted reward of conquerors to its becoming a violation of human rights under international law.