Reference no: EM132208055

The role of women, even today, in the 21st century, is described in more than one case to polemics because of inequalities in respect to the masculine gender. But this did not come from now, and not even a few years ago. Gender inequalities became apparent even when is portrayed and reflect in periods of ancient history. In this case, in particular, let's talk about the role of women in mythology and how it has not been recognized and given the importance it deserved.

Studying the evolution of female figures in mythology also means studying the development of the human being as a species, observing the different reactions through the different eras. The role that women are given in mythological stories is not exactly enviable. In many cases, the woman has been seen as a sexual object that fulfilled the function of reproduction, in other women was relegated to the home and it is only a minority that is presented as queens or those who take part in the battlefield.

Greek culture in many ways has been the origin of Western and modern culture. The myths were part of the cultural imaginary of ancient Greece, so it is important in order to approach the archaic Greek myths created by men to establish patriarchal biases. Through these myths, it is represented that the feminine is linked to evil. Nowadays these myths act in a reminiscent way and survive differently, in the stereotype created by patriarchy over centuries and centuries, spreading symbols, signs, and signals of symbolic violence against women. There is more than one woman, even goddesses, who have been relegated to remain in the shadow of a man in the history of mythology. Like David Leeming and Jake Page comment in "Goddess" the mythographers have used numerous tactics to set aside women and thus restrict the information on goddesses, heroines or other beings mythological women. These techniques ranges from the total omission from the narration of the stories point of view and male character although the clear protagonists are them, going through, when they are mentioned, not granting them or even a name and relegate them to be "the woman of" or "the daughter of" as if this relationship I already defined them sufficiently.

For example in the case of Greek mythology, for being perhaps the closest to our culture, we will see that the stories that are narrated conceive a mythology of men, since the world is presented to us from their point of view. Women, however, we are often represented as lacking initiative and almost always as girls, nubile maidens or already married women. This leads us to think that in these stories is omitted that moment in which the woman has to choose the kind of life that will take, that stage between adolescence and marriage.

Maybe this is omitted in the myths because these, at last, and in the end, they were a result of a society and in most cases, that was the way of life of women in ancient Greece, without the possibility of choice. The life of the Greeks it was governed by a double imperative: children became warriors and girls wives and mothers. In the case women, in mythology, there is no chronological process concrete.

Because we are going to talk about mythology as something global, without geographical restrictions, it should be noted that in a same period of time we can find cultures that praise goddesses as creators of life while others regions dismiss or repress or equate destructive maniacs or femme fatal.

It is also fascinating to look when talking about goddesses warriors or hunters, these are constantly compared with men as if that strength or courage were something out of the ordinary for their gender. There is a collective within Greek and Roman mythology that stands out for demonstrating that women can also be warriors, the Amazons. One of this queens was Omphale and she is also a case of how classical literature has been unfair to women.

Although she was an Amazon queen, in many cases, she is simply presented as the woman of Hercules. The story, however, tells us how Hercules, as punishment, it was put up for auction, being bought by Omphale. At his service, he spent three years, his servant and following the orders that the queen gave him. This myth runs a whole symbol of virility, as was Hercules, with his strength and physical power. During the time he shared with Omphale he was forced to perform tasks that, then, were carried out exclusively by women, such as weaving. An example that Hercules had to put aside his reputation as a man was the fact that Omphale forced him to dress in women's clothes, while she used the clothes of the hero and his weapons. Another version of this same fact, however, justifies this change of clothes as a strategy for the god Pan, who was secretly in love with the queen.

When dressing Hercules with feminine clothes and Omphale with lion skins, the god Pan felt both and chose to lie down next to the silk clothes, with such bad fortune that it was the hero who wore them. His story is unique and unique in the history of Greco-Roman mythology since we present a situation of the superiority of the female sex before the male. Further, we can infer that this story is another attempt to normalize and break taboos in gender issues since a hero is represented doing housework.

The greatest example of the insignia of women as the evil of humanity, which has been imposed on a large part of religions, in mythology has the name of Pandora. Created with the seed of lies, Zeus gave her the famous box, which kept all the evils of the world, with the promise not to open it. Pandora, a symbol of feminine curiosity, peeked into the box and the evils spread over men.

This myth represents the belief of feminine weakness, its natural sin for the fact of existing and that aversion of ancient cultures to women approaching knowledge before the possibility of the corruption of wisdom, a dogma that is still preserved today. The Greeks forged in mythology the reflection of their own vision of their world and the role of women. Little difference is the female role in society in other mythologies, use in their time, not so much if we move to our days where religion still drags a slow and late evolution in terms of gender equality.