The history of women from the Middle Age until now, had continuous periods of emancipation, and depending on the time in history, different roles and different considerations.
In the Medieval society women could only work in the fields or at home taking care of the family. In the first decade of the ‘800 women started to be able to access to jobs in factories even though they still couldn’t have an instruction that could put them at equality with men. Only at the end of the ‘800, the development of society towards urbanization and industrialization allowed women to have a greater independence. Some of them had access to higher level education and became part of the teaching system, while other women …show more content…
She was born in Italy on May 16, 1718 and died on January 9, 1799 in Italy. She is considered to be the first woman in the Western world to have achieved a reputation in mathematics. Agnesi was the eldest child of a wealthy silk merchant who provided her with the best tutors available. She was an extremely precocious child who mastered Latin, Greek, Hebrew, and several modern languages at an early age, and her father liked to host gatherings where she could display her knowledge. “Propositions of Philosophy,” a series of essays on natural philosophy and history based on her discussions before such gatherings, was published in 1738. Agnesi’s best-known work, “Analytical Institutions for the Use of Italian Youth,” provided a remarkably comprehensive and systematic treatment of algebra and analysis, including such relatively new developments as integral and differential calculus. The French Academy of Sciences, in its review of the Instituzioni, stated that: “We regard it as the most complete and best made treatise.” Pope Benedict XIV was similarly impressed and appointed Agnesi professor of mathematics at the University of Bologna in 1750. However, Agnesi had turned increasingly to religion and never journeyed to Bologna. After the death of her father in 1752, she devoted herself almost exclusively to charitable work and religious studies. She established various hospices and died in one of the poorhouses that she had once