Women in Church history

Women play a variety of roles in Christianity—notably as contemplatives, healthcare providers, educationalists, and missionaries. Until recent times, women have been generally excluded from episcopal and clerical positions within certain Christian churches; however, great numbers of women were influential in the life of the church, from contemporaries of Jesus to subsequent saints, theologians, doctors of the church, missionaries, abbesses, nuns, mystics, founders of religious institutes, military leaders, monarchs, and martyrs.

Christianity emerged from surrounding patriarchal societies that placed men in positions of authority in marriage, society, and government. While the early religion restricted membership of the priesthood to men, its earliest forms offered women an enhanced social status and quickly found a wide following. Women came to play an important role in Christianity through convents and abbeys, practicing as sisters and nuns. Women have maintained an active role throughout the history of Christianity—particularly in the establishment of schools, hospitals, nursing homes, and monastic settlements. Women constitute the majority of members of the consecrated life within the Catholic Church, the largest of the Christian churches. Except for the Eastern Christian churches, in most denominations, women have been the majority of church attendees since early in the Christian era and into the present. In recent decades, ordination of women has become increasingly common in some Protestant churches. Laywomen have also been highly active in the wider life of churches, supporting the community work of parishes.

In Roman Catholicism and Eastern Orthodoxy, particular veneration has been given to Mary, the Mother of Jesus, which made the model of maternal virtue central to their vision of Christianity. However, Marian devotion is generally not a feature of Reformed Christianity.