Roman Clothing, Part II. Women cannot partake of magistracies, priesthoods, triumphs, badges of office, gifts, or spoils of war; elegance, finery, and beautiful clothes are women's badges, in these they find joy and take pride, this our forebears called the women's world.
(Livy, History of Rome 34.5) In the above passage, Livy quotes a Roman tribune's argument for the repeal of the Oppian Law, a wartime measure which curtailed the finery that upper-class Roman women could display and which provoked the first recorded protest demonstration by women, as aristocratic Roman matrons took to the streets in 195 BCE to urge repeal of the law (click here for the context of this passage).
As the tribune pointed out, high-class Roman women did not have the same distinctions of clothing that immediately marked out the status of their male counterparts; in fact the only certain distinction of dress allowed to women was the stola, which indicated a woman's marital status, not her social class or wealth. Ancient Egypt: an introduction to its history and culture.