Roles Of Women In Ancient Babylonia, Greece, China, And Rome

Throughout history, women have been treated as inferior to men. Four examples of this are ancient Babylonia, India, Greece, China, and Rome, and each left writings that described the assigned roles of women in each civilization. The Babylonians had the Code of Hammurabi, who was a king that lived from 1792 B.C to 1750 B.C. India had the Code of Manu, which was written sometime between 200 B.C.E and 200 CE. Greece had Aristotle's "On a Good Wife," written around 330 B.C. China had Ban Zhoa's "Lessons for Women," written between 45 and 116 C.E. And Rome had "Livy's, History of Rome '' written between 59 BC- 17 A.D. All five include guidelines for how women should hold themselves in society, and in all five, women are held in lower esteem than men. Of these five ancient civilizations, women had the best quality of life in Greece because the men were taught to respect women.

The Code of Hammurabi, named for a

it gave an immense amount of detail about Hindu life at the time. It was used in ancient India to define the strict gender roles that were accepted at the time. The code of Manu also provided a set of rules for things such as the caste system, marriage as well as other social or legal activities. The document, along with many other resources reinforced the idea that women were inferior to men in this civilization. “For this reason, historians see a trend in ancient Indian history whereby women became increasingly subservient and subordinate.” as stated in the textbook (Beger, World History). In ancient India, women were expected to obey all the male figures, including their sons. In the document, it states, “Her lord is dead to her sons; a woman must never be independent.” (Code of Manu document). Women in this civilization were prohibited from a variety of different things. They were not able to own any type of property as well as even read sacred texts. Their only job was to be a wife and