The role of women in the society has been greatly overseen in the last few decades, but now is coming to a more perspective outlook. 

            In the early days, women’s role was to bear young and care for them. As part of that caring, women have traditionally been very involved in food preparation, which in many cultures expanded to include agricultural efforts to raise food as well as collecting water, gathering fuel for cooking, and making of objects needed by the family such as pottery and clothing. They were seen as wives who were intended to cook, clean, and take care of the kids.

            As tools and technology has evolved, the assumed role of the woman as the caregiver has ceased to be the only acceptable role in some parts of the world and in some cultures, although it persists in other areas. The generalizations have many more exceptions in today’s world.

            Even though women legally have the same rights as men, there is still a lot of sexism and double standards.  Women are still over sexualized and objectified.  The list goes on and on about the discrepancies between the genders, and it is not certainly just a thing of the past.  Women’s roles vary by society and time period, but there has been a gradual increase in gender equality, especially in the last hundred years.  Women do not have equal rights in some countries, especially in the Middle East.  American women may be able to do the same jobs as men, but they still are often paid less and promoted less often.  But in some countries, women are on a more equal footing with men in most cases: often by necessity, where women can now compete in the workplace for jobs that were once traditionally held by men (as a doctor for example), and also in light of two-parent working households.

            However, more than ever, opportunities are becoming educated, serving in medicine, politics, news reporting, etc.  In fact, most career opportunities are open to women.  Things have changed a great deal over the last hundred years since women won the right to vote, and equal opportunity legislation was passed just this twentieth century.

            Women has changed so vastly throughout the ages and from such diverse causes that there is no single descriptive umbrella that can identify a simplistic or “traditional” or uniform role for the women of today.                   

By: Jennifer Ann C. Espiritu