Women could not take part in political discussions and were not allowed to hold public positions, but in the years of empire such principles were changing. Attitude of Romans towards home and family made them seek advices of their wives, in fact women began to enjoy some basic public freedoms.
In years of empire woman got a right to control her own finance, which made her financially independent in case of divorce. Roman women worked seldom, labor was typical only for women from poor classes and slaves.
Since Roman society was based on slave-owning economy, gender roles were also observed among slaves. Female slaves were in more favorable position than male. Female slaves worked mainly at households and took part in child upbringing of their masters.
As we can see, gender roles in Ancient Rome contributed to the development of modern gender relations as they set the basic principles of family ethics.
In the middle Age epoch gender inequality was contributed by the Catholic Church strict canons about family ethics and morality. The life of medieval woman had to be close to the life of Virgin Mary: faithful wife, loving mother and housekeeper. Women could not participate in social life, hold offices, all their public life was restricted to activities, which had direct relationship to church only. Family life in Middle Age Europe was protected not only by the norms of current legislature but also by church. Divorce was prohibited and adultery was considered to be a mortal sin. Nevertheless love began to play a more important role in family relations of man and woman, especially if they wee from upper classes.
Illiteracy was common for the majority of medieval women, only women from upper...
Nevertheless, Catholicism did not always restrain women of medieval epoch:
Women used cosmetics, dyed their hair,...and plucked their eyebrows too, although by these practices they committed the sin of vanity" (Tuchman, 54).
Though Catholic Church and Christianity in general firmed the institute of family and equality of husband and wife, Medieval Europe was a classic patriarchal society. Man in many cases had unlimited power over his wife, family violence was a common practice and in reality women were not protected by the law.
But the changes in economical and political life of the Medieval Europe, development of trade, development of national economies required new principles of governing and administration, which had to be more secular. Such tendencies were also observed in gender relations. But it took several centuries until democratic freedoms and rights of both genders laid into modern constitutions and some two centuries more to break outdated patriarchal stereotypes.
Bibliography
Tuchman, Barbara W. A Distant Mirror: The Calamitous 14th Century. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1989.
Lipsitz Bem, Sandra The Lenses of Gender: Transforming the Debate on Sexual Inequality Yale University Press, 1994
Shulamith Shahar A History of Women in the Middle Ages Routledge, 2003
Appendix
Roman Empire (Map from Perry-Castaneda Library Map Collection) http://z.about.com/d/ancienthistory/1/0/I/C/romanempire395west.jpg
Middle Age Europe (Map at (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Europein1328.png)
Inequality between the genders
