In Hesiod’s myth, Pandora was the first woman created among humans.
Hesiod presents Pandora as part of Zeus’s punishment of humanity after Prometheus gave people fire. The gods make her in human form and send her into the world of mortals. Her arrival introduces a new condition of human life, in which sickness, toil, and other troubles spread among people.
The phrase “first woman” comes from Hesiod’s account and is a mythological description, not a claim about biological human origins. Greek mythology has different traditions and later retellings, so details can vary between authors and periods.
Pandora’s story is told especially in Hesiod’s Works and Days, where it explains why human beings experience hardship. A related account appears in the Theogony, although the two poems do not present every detail in exactly the same way. Modern retellings often focus mainly on the container and the escaped evils.