I am writing as essay for my history class and because curious if the first production of Medea (431 BC) coincided with a better quality of life for women. At what point did women begin to receive more fair treatment?
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Unfortunately, a timeline is going to be difficult to contruct for a couple of reasons. First, ancient Greece was a very diverse collection of polies and they had their own laws and customs. Second, timeline seems to imply that there was somekind of trend, hopefully upwards toward greater freedom, and this is not really the case :-\
Medea is breathtaking in how clearly it lays out the injustice of gender roles, but Athens was extremely repressive--I find it hard to not draw parallels to some of the worst images we have of Saudi law in terms of veils, required male protectors, and general lack of rights. Even though they were willing to give Medea's charecter such clearly challenging lines, they were perfectly willing to listen to Pericles tell women that they should shut up and sit down.
Rome had slightly better gender roles, but it's still a rough picture. I always struggle with this when I teach it, because it is so hard for my female students to hear, and they can't help but disconnect a little from the material when they find out what life would have been like for them in the ancient world.