Before the 19th century, women suffered a great deal of revulsion, relegation, discrimination and subjugation. Women's traditional roles were limited to the categorical imperatives of society. Women lacked equality and humanistic meaning based on these roles as domesticated women. The types of jobs accessible were being a housewife, fathering children, being an unpaid housekeeper, a secretary, and anything else considered an inferior occupation subjected to dominated males, particularly in European and American society. The vastness of American social models and local policies separated men and women; but it was women who suffered the consequences of those perspectives. There was the recurring mental and physical mistreatment and malicious abuse, which was complicated for women to resist because society conditioned women to be vulnerable and numerous consequences would follow. For example: total isolation from male family members, possible religious punishment and social avoidance. Fortunately, there has been a revolutionary movement that has altered benign traditional roles, bringing in many profits and allowing women to break out of traditional gender roles and take on a more androgynous role; that movement was known around the world as the Enlightenment. The Enlightenment was a cultural movement of reasoning and intellect that began in the late 17th century in Europe emphasizing individualism and reasoning rather than tradition. The purpose of this movement was to change society and apply reasoning to challenge the ideals of faith and tradition and advance traditional knowledge through the scientific method. This stimulated scientific reasoning and thinking, as well as human thinking. This allowed people to reconsider the limitations that women had and allowed more people to think more rationally and focus on equality, freedom and popular sovereignty that broaden agendas for women, which also influenced women outside the European race to oppose social relegation. Works Cited http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Women_in_the_Enlightenment Calhoun, Bonnie. “Shaping the Public Sphere: English Coffeehouses and French Salons and the Age of Enlightenment.” Colgate Academic Review 3.1 (2012): 7. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Women_in_the_Enlightenment Neville, H. A., & Hamer, J. F. (2006). Black women's revolutionary activism: Experience and transformation. Black Scholar, 36(1), 2-11.McCammon, Holly J., et al. “How Movements Win: Gender Opportunity Structures and Women's Suffrage Movements in the United States, 1866 to 1919.” American Sociological Review (2001): 49-70.