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.