Gender Roles

Gender up to this day has always been a huge topic of conversation. I recently read the epic poem The Aeneid by Virgil. Virgil has some interesting points about the roles of men and women. In my opinion they are a bit contradictory. In this epic poem there are many Gods and Goddess who although have great power the Gods controlled the main events, which can be interpreted that the males, the Gods had more power and were stronger. Although this was back in ancient times, we can still see this in today's society. For example a male and female police officer technically hold the same power but the males are respected more, since they are seen as being stronger. However in certain cases today men and women are seen as equal. In several Latin American countries there have been female presidents which would not have been thought of about twenty years ago. What I find interesting is that in the united states we still don't think that a female is fit to be president. Many people think that females are too emotional or as today's society would say “petty” which is why they refuse to have a female as president of the free world. Even though this is thousands of years after the Gods and Goddesses, they encountered the same issue. During The Aeneid Juno one of the goddesses has it out after Aeneas. Throughout the epic Juno makes Aeneas’ life miserable because she holds a grudge against him for being a Trojan. However not all of the Goddesses were portrayed like Juno was. Venus was good hearted and Camilla was a warrior. I am a female and although not all females are vengeful and “petty” many are. We may be living in a different time period but many characteristics in our gender roles have maintained the same. Another aspect of gender portrayed in the epic poem is femininity and masculinity. Camilla one of the females was seen as a warrior but only because they portrayed her to have masculine characteristics such as being duty-bound and fierce, with the overall goal of achieving peace. As can be seen before one of the main goddesses never strived for peace. This is also something that can be seen in today's society, whenever a female soldier is seen as “badass” it’s because she has masculine features, or characteristics that make her up to par with the male soldiers. In The Aeneid Virgil has several different views on females. He has the vindictive one being Juno, the caring and head on strong being Venus, and the masculine warrior being Camila. In today’s society, over 2,000 years later we still have all of those types of females. The Kardashians could be seen as the Juno's of today, Michelle Obama could be seen as Venus, and Rhonda Roussey could be seen as Camilla. All in all, our times may be completely different but we still have some similar societal characteristics such as gender roles.