European imperialism in the 19th century was largely motivated by countries' desire to:

gain access to natural resources and foreign markets.

the exact role and status of women in the roman world, and indeed in most ancient societies, has often been obscured by the biases of both ancient male writers and 19-20th century ce male scholars, a situation only relatively recently redressed by modern scholarship which has sought to more objectively assess women's status, rights, duties, representation in the arts, and daily lives; and all this from almost exclusively male source material dealing with a male-dominated roman world.

women in mythology

unlike some other ancient cultures such as the greeks who had formed a creation myth where woman was a creature secondary to man and, more specifically, in the form of pandora, a bringer of unhappiness and vices, the romans had a more neutral approach where humanity, and not specifically the male, was created by the gods from earth and water. ovid's metamorphoses, for example, does not specify whether the first human was a man or a woman. at least in a physical sense then men and women were not regarded as belonging to a different species as in the greek world, a view often reiterated in roman medical treatises.