Which work by Hesiod describes Pandora as the first woman created by the gods?

Hesiod’s Works and Days describes Pandora as the first woman created by the gods.

Works and Days is an ancient Greek didactic poem traditionally attributed to Hesiod. It combines advice about farming, justice, labor, and proper conduct with mythological stories, including the creation of Pandora. In the poem, Zeus’s punishment of humanity follows Prometheus’s theft of fire, and Pandora’s arrival introduces suffering into human life.

Theogony, another poem attributed to Hesiod, also mentions Pandora and the divine creation story, but Works and Days provides the fuller narrative familiar to modern readers. It explains the container, the escape of troubles, and the survival of Hope in greater detail.

The poem is not a modern narrative focused only on Pandora. Her story supports Hesiod’s wider argument about work, hardship, justice, and the conditions of human existence. Later retellings often isolate the container-opening scene, while the original poem places it within a much broader meditation on why life requires labor and endurance.