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Throughout history gender equality has always been a highly sensitive topic, as it can lead to a numerous amount of different opinions. Although views of gender equality have drastically changed from long ago to today, many ideas are still argued to be unchanged or should remain the same. This can be clearly depicted in the play Antigone by Sophocles between the protagonist Antigone, and King Creon. Due to the external conflict between these two characters, many stereotypes between women and men’s roles in society long ago are depicted.

During the time period of the play Antigone, men and women roles were extremely different than depicted today. Back then, men were shown to be the head of the house who were in charge of bringing in all income to the family, and leader of all important aspects of the family, whereas the role for women in this time period consisted of caring for the house by doing roles such as cooking and cleaning, caring for the children, and most importantly being extremely obedient to the husband and listen to all commands given by him. As king Creon says in the conversation between him and his son “Your nature is vile, in yielding to a woman.” (Sophocles 803) he clearly does not believe women in this case Antigone have the right in society to not only break a law but go against the authority of a man especially a king as powerful as Creon himself. A second example from the play that showed stereotypes between men and women in society was when Ismene says to Antigone “You ought to realize we are only women, not meant in nature to fight against men” (Sophocles 71). This quote from Ismene shows an excellent example as to what women of the time period were supposed to do when dealing with a man, which was just listen to orders. Most women of this time period indeed listened to these unwritten rules. All except for Antigone who was a strong and brave woman who went against the king in order to bury her brother Polyneices. An act like this was not only illegal but for a woman to do it was almost sure to cause some tension.

Antigone is very stubborn when it comes to her listening to kind Creon tell her to stop her attempts to bury her brother and clearly gets under the skin of king Creon by making him say “we cannot give victory to a woman, if we must accept defeat, let it be from a man” (Sophocles 576). This proves once again that for a woman to attempt things such as what is being implemented by Antigone is extremely un rare and can cause an immense amount of problems. As Antigone continues to take no as an answer and insist that she will bury her brother, Creon says once again that “As long as I am alive no women shall rule” (Sophocles 576). This is a final quote said from the play Antigone that depicts the extreme and obvious stereotypes that existed long ago between men and women.

As you can see, long ago stereotypes between men and women were substantially extreme and we clearly have done a good job in deleting some of these stereotypes from society today which is why topics such as gender equality are so sensitive and important. Examples shown from the play Antigone by Sophocles especially in the conflict between King Creon and Antigone clearly depict some of the stereotypes between men and women which have been destroyed today.