Women throughout the years have been subjected to laws, beliefs, rituals, and customs that keep changing with the progression of knowledge. Societies of the ancient world had different thoughts on a woman’s function in society even when they lived during the same time period. The ancient codes of law and stories helped us assess the female role because they presented how the different civilizations valued a woman’s position and whether they treated her fairly or not. Women, until today, are not considered totally equal to men, yet history has proven that there are cases of women as leaders with property rights and legal rights similar to that of men. On the other hand, some societies still believed that a woman’s only task is to obey her husband …show more content…
In other words, men and women had equal rights in a sense because Egypt did not classify its people according to gender, but according to social rank. In terms of legal rights, an Egyptian woman, similarly to a Persian woman, was able to deal with her private properties as she pleased. Even though the Egyptian and Persian woman had a similar legal right, the Egyptian woman still had her rights even when Egypt was conquered by the Greeks and Alexander the Great (Piccione). An Egyptian woman had more rights than a Persian or Greek woman because she was able to free slaves, adopt children, sue others, and administer her own property without a male representative. A Greek woman, for instance, needed a “Kourios” or a male representative, who was either a father, husband or brother, to deal with her legal contracts (Piccione). Unlike a Persian woman who had to return the money she had received and had no claim to joint property in the event of a divorce, an Egyptian woman would have still had claim over one-third of the community property and her own property would remain hers after a divorce. Another dissimilarity between the Persian and Egyptian woman is the need to wear a veil when in public. Egyptian women were free to work out in fields, workshops, or just freely walk out in public without the need to wear a veil on their heads
During the rise and fall of the Roman republic, the social role women played in society had its influence in religion and in the domestic sphere. A woman’s social status at home changed very drastically, however, her role and duties were relatively static. Religiously, few legal steps were taken towards women’s equality and a patriarchal system remained intact. The original laws and customs that determined the social structure of the Roman family and life at home placed men in a dominant role over women. Men had the power over the children, their rearing, and wives were treated like they were their husband’s daughter.
Most classical society’s political and social organization revolved around the idea of patriarchy, a male dominated social system. This system exacerbated the inherit difference between men and woman and assigned gender roles based on these observations. Men were generally regarded as superior to woman therefore given greater religious and political roles as well as more legal rights. As the natural inverse, women were subordinated and seen as week; their main roles reproductive and domestic. Information about patriarchy in the classical era, though abundant, was, for the most part, written by men, therefore history does not give us an accurate depiction of women’s viewpoints. Four societies of the classical era, India, China, Greece, and Rome, adopted a patriarchal system, however, due to many factors, each developed identifiable characteristics.
Throughout most of recorded history, women generally have endured significantly fewer career opportunities and choices, and even less legal rights, than that of men. The “weaker sex,” women were long considered naturally, both physically and mentally, inferior to men. Delicate and feeble minded, women were unable to perform any task that required muscular or intellectual development. This idea of women being inherently weaker, coupled with their natural biological role of the child bearer, resulted in the stereotype that “a woman’s place is in the home.” Therefore, wife and mother were the major social roles and significant professions assigned to women, and were the ways in which women identified and expressed themselves. However, women’s history has also seen many instances in which these ideas were challenged-where women (and some men) fought for, and to a large degree accomplished, a re-evaluation of traditional views of their role in society.
Women in the Hellenistic World Women’s lives were improved and expanded in the Hellenistic age more so than at any other time prior Greek history. Papyri from Egypt and Coele-Syria have led to the discovery of documents on marriage contracts, inscriptions of philanthropy, and the daily lives of the women in that period. The Hellenistic woman changed in many ways. She became more educated, more cultured, and she received domestic freedom and her new legal and occupational advancements and a whole other myriad of news liberations. The ideal of the Classical obedient Greek wife was turned upside down. She no longer had to be escorted to places outside her home and to issue legal documents. She also could now have contracts drawn up to secure her position in a marriage contracts that would cover adultery and her right to divorce. Before the Hellenistic age Greek wives were looked down upon. They were seen as a means to produce kin, take care of the domestic duties, and be subordinate to their husbands. In a speech by King Eteocles in 467 BCE to some Theban women who have thrown themselves to his feet in a desperate attempt to lift his besiegement of Thebes, he says: “I ask you, you intolerable creatures, if you think that your behavior will be helpful to the state and will bring salvation, or support the army that is besieged, if you fall on the statues of the gods who protect the state, and wail and scream – to the disgust of sensible people?” (Lefkowitz and Fant, 28) He uses the term intolerable creatures to characterize these women.
Henrik Ibsen once said, “A woman cannot be herself in the society of the present day, which is an exclusively masculine society, with laws framed by men and with a judicial system that judges feminine conduct from a masculine point of view.”(Notable Quotes) Ibsen’s statement exemplifies what life was like for women during ancient times. In many of the organized ancient civilizations, it was very common to find a primarily patriarchal civilization in government as well as in society. The causing factors can be attributed to different reasons, the main being the Neolithic Revolution and the new found dependence on manpower it caused. As a result of this, a woman found herself to be placed into an entirely different view in the eye of society. In comparison to the early Paleolithic matriarchal societies, the kinds of changes that came about for women due to the introduction of agriculture are shocking. Since the beginnings of the Neolithic era, the role and rights of women in many ancient civilizations began to become limited and discriminatory as a result of their gender.
Women have the right to live their own life the way that they please. Women are not properties, nor are they incompetent. Women have the same opportunities to thrive in society as does any male, but some customs and traditions of some cultures prevent women from soaring to such heights. Culturally traditional men want complete dominion over their women. But who can blame them, it’s how they were raised and these things have been rooted in them since they were young children. When one thinks of a culture’s virtue, they automatically think of women’s behavior within her family context. A woman is gold in any society but yet is treated as properties. It is safe to say that one’s honor depend on a woman.
In the majority of early cultures and societies, women have always been considered subservient and inferior to men. Since the first wave of feminism in the 19th century, women began to revolt against those prejudicial social boundaries by branching out of the submissive scope, achieving monumental advances in their roles in civilization. However, gender inequality is still prevalent in developed countries. Women frequently fall victim to gender-based assault and violence, suffer from superficial expectations, and face discriminatory barriers in achieving leadership roles in employment and equal pay. Undoubtedly, women have gained tremendous recognition in their leaps towards equal opportunity, but to condone these discrepancies, especially
Gender roles have been a predominant factor in our world since the early emergence of human societies whether they are positive or negative. They are based on expectations that societies have over the people in them. The Epic of Sunjata, shows us how men and women are treated almost equally in different forms. Women are praised for their ability to birth leaders, which is similar to the early Greek Society. In most societies, women are treated less equal than men. This was prevalent in the early Indian society. No matter the gender role, it has been shown that any society cannot survive without both men and women.
Women in Ancient Rome did not have equal legal status as their husbands, fathers, or any other male figures in the society. Women were not allowed to make legal transactions without her husband’s or father’s consent. This showed how men were superior and controlled the money in the family. A woman was permanently attached to her family of birth and her husband’s family, if she got married.
The struggle for women to play an important role in history can be traced from the ancient Mesopotamians to the 1900’s. There has been a continuous battle for women to gain equal rights and to be treated equally in all aspects of life. The Epic of Gilgamesh is the oldest recorded account of the roles of women and their importance in a functional society. Women have been viewed as anything from goddesses to unwanted servants throughout history, regardless of a variety of changes in rulers, religions, and simply time periods. The Epic of Gilgamesh might lead one to consider the roles of women a small and insignificant part compared to the man 's role. In fact, three women; Shamhat, Ishtar, and Siduri, were able to create and maintain a civilized Mesopotamian society with using their uniqueness of their body, mind, and spirit.
In today’s world, gender roles still exist, and there is much controversy regarding the topic. I believe how gender roles are viewed is partly what determines how advanced a society of people has become. Even though today’s modern women have advanced somewhat from their roles prior to 1500, more advancement is needed fo...
When in Ancient Rome, women were granted barely, if any, freedom at all. These women were not viewed as their own person or respected as a part of society or even a human being. They were not even granted their own proper authority to a nice strong household. The conceiving of a child and the expectations of an ideal woman stayed the same throughout most of Ancient Rome’s history, although some did improve after a while. The rights among the Ancient Romans were unequal and very unfair to women in their empire.
In Pharonic Egypt, women were the legal equals of men. They were not denied any rights in accordance of the law because of their gender. Women, like men, could own property, coming into it either through inheritance, as a payment for goods or services, or through purchase. Women could buy houses and goods, and with them, they were allowed to do as they chose. Being landholders and people of property afforded ancient Egyptian women a reasonable amount of social freedom. They could travel about freely in towns without veiled faces. In their own homes, women could move about as they pleased, they were not forced to remain in one section of the house or forbidden from other common areas as they were in other societies of the time.
Ortner (1974, in Rosaldo & Lamphere) attempts to answer the questions why women, as she sees it, are universally subordinate to men. She admits that the relative power women wield and the actual treatment they receive vary widely between societies, that each society’s concept of the female position is likely to consist of several layers and that the cultural ideology may well be distinct from the observable state of affairs, but sets out nonetheless from the premise that women have ... ... middle of paper ... ... different societies and the relationships between gender and power and sex and gender are far from clear-cut. In order to elucidate the position of women in a particular society we must examine the complexities and nuances of its social relations and culture rather than imprudently applying our own categories.
In the past, many people believed that women’s exclusive responsibilities were to serve their husband, to be great mothers and to be the perfect wives. Those people considered women to be more appropriate for homemaking rather than to be involved in business or politics. This meant that women were not allowed to have a job, to own property or to enjoy the same major rights as men. The world is changing and so is the role of women in society. In today’s society, women have rights that they never had before and higher opportunities to succeed.