The role of women is much different today than it was in the past. Today, women work outside the home much more (a single income household is simply too hard to support). Women also have more power than they have in the past. Look at the influence of women like Michelle Obama and Oprah.

Women are required to balance a lot more today than in the past as well. Jobs, children, homes, life in general.

The role of Western women through history is ofttimes oversimplified and misinterpreted through the lens of recent history for which there are far more records. Focusing on the 1950s, women came to be idealized as a result of the affects of two World Wars, with houses in isolated, idealized suburbs and Christian Dior styles that glorified form and restricted movement, etc. Focusing on the 19th century, women in Western societies hit their lowest point with patriarchal pomposity and grandiosity significantly heightened. These two eras form much of what today is inadequately called the "traditional" roles of women.

As antiquities archaeologist Robin Lane Fox says, while literature cannot stand in lieu of archaeological evidence, it must be taken seriously into account as it must have rung true in the society in which it was written to have been accepted. Therefore literature can give guidelines to the roles women had in more remote eras. Women have been spoken of since Biblical times as running private businesses, managing large pools of domestic servants and making significant contributions to society. In fact, Fox speaks of inscriptions at Delphi that identify women as the authoritarian and financial sponsors for grand and culturally important civic buildings in antiquity. In Beowulf, Wealhtheow may not have had legal power, but she had personal power and authority. For example, she could order her husband's men and they would obey her: She was not a "traditional" Victorian nor an idealized 1950s woman, at all.

Further, historian writers of an AP text declare that their research connects the idea of a woman's place being in the home to post-plague times when part of promises of marriage included the promise to keep the woman safe at home, in other words, not exposed to the terrors of the plague. This places the rise of the connection between a woman's place and the home with love and protection instead of with dominance, suppression and subjugation. In brief (?!), the role of Western 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 Western women.

There is so much that can be said in relation to this post. To pick up on some of what the other editors have commented upon, let us be aware that many people claim that, although the conditions for women have become far more equitable, at the same time there is still what is called a "glass ceiling" that prevents women from achieving the same levels of responsibility and salaries as men, and it is all the more pernicious because it is "glass" and therefore invisible.

In response to post #4

Even though women legally have the same rights as men, there is still a lot of sexism and double standards in this country. Women are still oversexualized and objectified. Older women in Hollywood are not as successful as the men. The list goes on and on about the disrepancies 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 ofen paid less and promoted less often.

Where to start? For thousands of years, women (in cultures dominated by by men) were subservieant to men. There are a few exceptions were the lineage of a family was traced on the mother's side, surnames came from the mother, etc. However, the lineage in most cultures generally follows the male line of the family.

In some cultures, women work/worked side-by-side men. In the Anglo-Saxon period, women often fought alongside the men. In many very old and traditional cultures (both in terms of and religious) women are seen as second-class citizens. The old addage of women "barefoot and pregnant" still exists today in some areas of the world. Women are not allowed to make major decisions in the family and are expected to submit in all things to the husband; they cannot own anything, and they are not permitted to go to school. This is certainly the way things were in England hundreds of years ago, where women could not (historically) inherit money or property, or if they did, it was forfeited to the husband when the woman married. Widows might not marry again for just this reason.

Today, at least in America, 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. In other countries, still women are treated without value. I recently men a man of a particular faith who would not shake my hand because I was a woman.

However, more than ever, opportunities in becoming educated, serving in medicine, politics, news reporting—in fact, most career opportunities—are open to women in this country. Things have changed a great deal over the last three hundred years in America—even since women won the right to vote near the beginning of the twentieth century, and equal opportunity legislation was passed just past the middle of the twentieth century.

I would throw out the thought that in the U.S., at least, the only real sexism comes from people with no sense of reality. Any woman in the U.S. is free to do anything she wants, any time she wants. There are abusive relationships, of course, and there are sexist bosses and so forth, but I've never encountered a woman in my life who couldn't work, or drive, or go out in public without a man and with her legs showing. Really, we can see the progression of woman's rights just by comparing certain third-world countries with the U.S. and making a timeline. Some people are just stuck in the past, and abuse of women and their rights is a part of that past.

Obviously, you are asking a broad question that can be answered with broad generalizations that are relatively meaningless in specific situations, or you can give detailed responses that vary greatly from place to place and at different times in history.

In the far distant past, 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.

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.

The role of women is something that varies significantly across the world today.  However, we can generally say that women's roles have been expanded from what they traditionally were in the past.  This is especially true in more developed countries.

In more developed countries in particular, more jobs require little physical strength.  This means that there are many fewer jobs that women are less able to do.  As a result, women's roles have expanded to the point where a majority of women tend to participate in the labor market.  Along with this has come a great increase in the status of women.  The idea that women and men are equal is much more (though not universally) accepted than it ever has been in the past.

Of course, this is not true for all women in the developed world and is even less true in many parts of the developing world.

Describe the role of women in the past and present time.

In western Europe and the United States from the start of industrialism up until and even through much the twentieth century, women were supposed to work in the home, especially after marriage.

Before the Industrial Revolution, societies were primarily agricultural and the bulk of the population worked on farms. Here, men, women, and children worked side by side. Even people who ran manufacturing or retail businesses lived at or very near their workplaces and the entire family pitched in to help with the business. After industrialism and the rise of the factory, however, the home and workplace split in two. The home became the refuge removed from work and dominated by women, while the men went off to earn a living, be it in a bank or a bakery.

Young, unmarried women often worked in factories, as domestics, or taught school but were expected to give this work up when they married. Once married, they were subsumed legally into their husband's identity and expected to bear children and take care of the house.

In the twentieth century, that social arrangement began to change. Women campaigned and won more rights, rights which gradually increased as the century wore on. As infant and child mortality plummeted, women could easily limit family size, especially after improvements in birth control. Labor saving technologies, such as washer/dryers, refrigeration, running water inside the home, gas heat, and dishwashers saved time. With fewer chores and fewer children, more women could and did earn money outside the house.

While full equality has yet to be achieved, most women are wage earners and are legally and socially able to live independently of men if they choose to do so.

Describe the role of women in the past and present time.

In the United States, at least, women's roles today and in the past have some things in common, but are also very different.

In the past, (largely in the time from after the Civil War up through the 1970s or so) women were expected to center their lives around homemaking.  They were expected to be wives and mothers and, for the most part, nothing else.  Women were definitely expected to be subordinate to men.

Nowadays, some things have not changed much.  Women are still expected to do most of the work of keeping house and caring for children.  It is not as much as in the past, but that is still seen as work that is more suited for women.  At the same time, however, there is a clear assumption that it is okay and even desireable for a woman to have a career.  Just as one example of this, we can see that a very conservative woman, Michelle Bachmann, is running to be president of the United States.  This shows a major change in how women's roles are perceived.

Women now are not expected (by the vast majority of Americans) to be subordinate to men.  They are not expected to be only wives and mothers.  However, they are still expected to do much of the work that they used to in their roles as wives and mothers.  In addition, they are expected in many cases to have careers just as men do.

What is the role of women from past to present?

This question is quite expansive, as women's roles have varied from culture to culture. Native American women had more rights than women in Western cultures. Currently, women in the Middle East are advocating for rights that other women have had in other cultures for decades.

Women in western culture were often considered to be inferior to men. Whether as daughters or wives, women had lesser status than men. It was harder for a woman to be granted a divorce than a man. Women were also paid less for work outside the home; that is, if they were allowed to work at all. This pay gap still exists for many women in corporate America today.

Whenever women did take jobs outside the home in the past, it was often for nurturing roles such as nursing or education. Women also performed domestic duties while serving as maids and laundresses. It was understood that women would leave their profession and become homemakers when they were married; this was actually written into many teachers' contracts in the United States.

The 1960s saw more women become advocates for their own independence. Women sought out roles outside that of homemaker for their own fulfillment and still push for equal pay in business roles. Some women also want to have the same jobs as men, such as serving in combat roles in the US military. This question is quite expansive, but I think that if you focus on the history of women in one nation, that will be your best option. I picked the United States, though that is not the only option available.