Role of Women Throughout History

Women in History

Although women have largely suffered from political and economic subordination throughout most of the course of human history, women's roles changed somewhat throughout the bulk of the past millennium. Female roles, occupations, and social status vary from culture to culture and place to place. In general, however, women's roles in society have reflected their inferior political and economic status. Even when women work alongside their male counterparts, the majority of women in any given society have been deprived of the same economic, social, and political rights of men. In almost all cases and regardless of their social rank, women's roles center on their relationships with men and their being mothers.

In the middle ages, women were not expected to remain idle while raising their children. Rather, women worked hard in the fields, as agriculture was an integral part of the majority of European communities at the time. The status of women increased somewhat when midwifery became the sole profession of women; women reigned in their role as child bearers. Midwifery enabled women to retain control over the birthing process. This would change centuries later, when men took over the medical establishment during and after the Industrial Revolution and until this day. Therefore, the role of women throughout time has not necessarily been marked by evolutionary progress or improvement. Women have, however, been excluded from most professional guilds and organizations until relatively recently. The evolution of women's control over their bodies has fluctuated from a certain control exhibited during the Middle Ages through a loss of control during and after the nineteenth century. The development of sophisticated methods of birth control such as the contraceptive pill has once again given the power over childbearing back into the hands of women in the middle to late twentieth century. Although males in nearly every society retain control over the medical institutions, females have at least regained some control over their bodies in Europe and North America.

The evolution of women's work has been sluggish. During the middle ages, "women worked alongside men in all agricultural work ... they dominated the production of ale and beer; they supplemented household income with poultry farming and the manufacture of cheese," ("Western Europe ... "). Women had been expected to work and earn money in the middle ages and although women's work has consistently held less value in the society than men's work, women have always been expected to carry out the burdens of childrearing as well as breadwinning.

The rise of Christian Church doctrine hindered the social status of women from that time forth. According to Kimberly Radek, the Renaissance "benefited only men." Women's work has been denied any categorical importance throughout the past millennium. The Christian view of the female as being second in Creation to the male and as being an evil temptress contributed to the reality of perpetual inferiority for women. Women's roles changed little in terms of political, economic, and social power in Europe and European colonies from the Middle Ages until the middle of the twentieth century. By denying women access to political power, land ownership, education, and professional development, women have been and remain dependent on men in nearly every culture across the globe.

The Industrial Revolution altered women's work, introducing a new social order that demanded that women take jobs in factories far from their homes. However, in spite of shifting economic realities and their concurrent social changes, women's roles changed little. In fact, the late nineteenth and first half of the twentieth century promoted the "cult of the ideal woman," which significantly restricted the social norms and roles of females. Women were expected to remain at home, tethered to their households, husbands, and children in theory. Only the very wealthy women were able to fulfill their ideal role as stay-at-home homemaker, though, as most women were forced to obtain employment elsewhere to make ends meet.

Work for women has consistently reflected certain patterns, again until only the past several decades. Since the eleventh century, women have participated in marketplaces as vendors of wares. Throughout the centuries women have been mainly involved in the realms of textiles, food harvesting, and food preparation. During the middle ages, women almost exclusively performed clothes-making duties like spinning, weaving, and embroidery. Such tasks have not only remained relatively stable over the course of the past several centuries, but women's jobs have been fairly consistently deemed as inferior jobs to those that males in the society performed.

Women have also been consistently denied equal access to education. The evolution of women's education has only recently begun to change. Even today, women and girls in various cultures around the world have less access to education than men and boys. In extreme cases, girls and women are prohibited from attaining education or literacy at all.