Women's Roles In Ancient Mesopotamia

In the history of the human race, women have been an integral part of the society. They have taken various roles in the society-some major and others minor according to societal standards. In ancient Egypt and Mesopotamia, women were treated differently. The Egyptian women enjoyed more rights than the Mesopotamian women. The trend of women subservience was then propagated down to the 15th century. Women were in most cases reduced to shadows of men. In this essay we would compare how women have been treated in history in the past and in the presence, looking into aspects of discrimination, sexism and inequality. It is true to say that from ancient times, women have not been treated equally to their male counterparts in almost all aspects of life.
Women in ancient Mesopotamia could not act in accordance to their personal will but they were defined as family property. A woman was seen as a father’s daughter or as a husband’s …show more content…
This minimal involvement meant that there was a variation in the social agreement of marriage but a woman could initiate a divorce. The woman also retained all the property she had acquired before marriage. However, in ancient Mesopotamia women were a property and they were under obligation of the husband’s whole family. They were thus reduced to a life of servitude and subservience (Noonan 1).
It should be noted that in both ancient Egypt and Mesopotamia, women had no political say and that they were subservient to men when it came to matters of societal leadership. In matters of justice the women were not accorded fair judgments and the laws enacted were not in most instances not considerate of women. Women would be severely punished for same mistakes which their male counterparts would get a lesser penalty or none at all. Thus in the ancient societies of Egypt and Mesopotamia, women were the tools of bearing the societal