Jimmy Daudert
Block 0606
11/18/08
Treatment of Women through History
Throughout history, women have struggled to have rights in this country. Women have been treated like second-class citizens. The battle for rights has been long and still continues..A long time ago women were treated without respect. Throughout the years women have been gaining more and more respect. Back then women were stay-at-home types of moms. Now more women are having actual careers. The roles are switching and more men are staying home while the women are bringing the food.
Women have made great leaps that were not possible 30 years ago. Some examples are going to outer space, and running for president, women being able to vote. Once women were able to vote things started to majorly turn around.
Women were treated as more of property other than a human being.
n the early times, women were viewed as a source of bringing new human life into this world. However, they have also been viewed by the dominant group as intellectually inferior and as a source of temptation and evil. Early Roman law saw women as children, forever lesser then men. St. Jerome, a 4th-century Latin father of the Christian church said “Woman is the gate of the devil, the path of wickedness, and the string of the serpent, in a word a perilous object.”
In the past, women lacked many rights. They were not allowed to own property, sign a contract, vote or hold an opinion that contradicted that of their husband. Women were to marry and tend to their household and husband. Education that went beyond writing and reading was uncommon. Once a woman married, the little bit of freedom she may have enjoyed before marriage would be gone. Few women worked, but if they did, they had no control of their earnings. They had no right to sue, and if they divorced, they lost custody of their children and possessions.
Women have been considered the weaker sex. Women were viewed—and presently still viewed by many—as delicate,...