Women in Church history have played a variety of roles in the life of Christianity—notably as contemplatives, health care givers, educationalists and missionaries. Until recent times, women were generally excluded from episcopal and clerical positions within the certain Christian churches; however, great numbers of women have been 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 within surrounding patriarchal societies that placed men in positions of authority in marriage, society and government, and, whilst the religion restricted membership of the priesthood to males only, in its early centuries it offered women an enhanced social status and quickly found a wide following among women. With the exception of the Eastern Christian churches,^[1] in most denominations, women have been the majority of church attendees since early in the Christian era and into the present.^[2] Later, as religious sisters and nuns, women came to play an important role in Christianity through convents and abbeys and have continued through history to be active—particularly in the establishment of schools, hospitals, nursing homes and monastic settlements. Women constitute the great majority of members of the consecrated life within the Catholic Church, the largest of the Christian churches. 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.

Within Roman Catholicism and Eastern Orthodoxy, particular place of veneration has been reserved for Mary, the Mother of Jesus, which has kept a model of maternal virtue central to their vision of Christianity.^[3] Marian devotion is however, generally not a feature of Reformed Christianity.

During the early centuries of Christianity, there is evidence of a great deal of activity by women in the life of congregations. Women served as deacons and ladies of means like Lydia of Philippi acted as financiers. Women probably constituted the majority of Christians. Blainey notes that by around AD 300, women had become so influential in the affairs of the church that the pagan philosopher Porphyry "complained that Christianity had suffered because of them".^[17] Nevertheless, by the close of the Patristic era, a male hierarchy had established itself over church affairs, with priests and bishops running the congregations.^[10]

As Western Europe transitioned from the Classical to Medieval Age, the male hierarchy with the Pope as its summit became a central player in European politics, however many women leaders also emerged at various levels within the Church. In the East, a similar male hierarchy prevailed around the Patriarch at Constantinople. However, women rose to play an active role in religion after the Fall of Rome: mysticism flourished and monastic convents and communities of women became powerful institutions within Europe. Marian devotion blossomed, setting a model of maternal virtue at the heart of Western civilization.

In the West, the Roman Catholic Church was the major unifying cultural influence in Europe during the Middle Ages with its selection from Latin learning, preservation of the art of writing, and a centralized administration through its network of bishops. In the East, that role fell to the Orthodox Church and Byzantine Empire (the churches split in 1054). In the Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox Church, the priesthood and the ministries dependent upon it such as Bishop, Patriarch and Pope, were restricted to men. The first Council of Orange (441) forbade the ordination of women to the diaconate.^[19]

With the establishment of Christian monasticism, other influential roles became available to women. From the 5th century onward, Christian convents provided an alternative for some women to the path of marriage and child-rearing and allowed them to acquire literacy and learning, and play a more active religious role. While non-aristocratic women were in many respects excluded from political and mercantile life in the Middle Ages, leading churchwomen were an exception. Medieval abbesses and female superiors of monastic houses were powerful figures whose influence could rival that of male bishops and abbots: "They treated with kings, bishops, and the greatest lords on terms of perfect equality; ... they were present at all great religious and national solemnities, at the dedication of churches, and even, like the queens, took part in the deliberation of the national assemblies...".^[22]

A major spokesman for the Church in the High Middle Ages (11th through 13th centuries) was Thomas Aquinas,^[23] one of the 33 Doctors of the Roman Catholic Church and renowned 13th-century theologian.

A network of European monarchies established power throughout Western Europe through the Medieval period. Men were generally given precedence to reign as monarch, however aristocratic women could achieve influence. A number of such women were singled out as model Christians by Pope John Paul II in his Mulieris Dignitatem letter on the dignity and vocation of women: Olga of Kiev, Matilda of Tuscany, Hedwig of Silesia, Jadwiga of Poland and Elizabeth of Hungary.^[32]

The first Russian ruler to convert to Christianity was Olga of Kiev around 950AD. She is an important figure in the spread of Christianity to Russia and commemorated by both the Catholic and Orthodox churches. Italian noblewoman Matilda of Tuscany (1046–1115) is remembered for her military accomplishments and for being the principal Italian supporter of Pope Gregory VII during the Investiture Controversy. Saint Hedwig of Silesia (1174–1243) supported the poor and the church in Eastern Europe and Jadwiga of Poland reigned as monarch of Poland and, within the Catholic Church, is honoured as the patron saint of queens and of a "united Europe". Saint Elisabeth of Hungary (1207–1231) was a symbol of Christian charity who used her wealth to establish hospitals and care for the poor.

As sponsor of Christopher Columbus' 1492 mission to cross the Atlantic, the Spanish Queen Isabella I of Castille (known as Isabella the Catholic), was an important figure in the growth of Catholicism as a global religion. Her marriage to Ferdinand II of Aragon had ensured the unity of the Spanish Kingdom and the royal couple held equal authority. The Catholic Monarchs then conquered the last Moorish bastion in Spain at Granada in January 1492 and seven months later, Columbus sailed for the Americas. The Catholic encyclopedia, credits Isabella as an extremely able ruler and one who "fostered learning not only in the universities and among the nobles, but also among women". Of Isabella and Ferdinand, it says: "The good government of the Catholic sovereigns brought the prosperity of Spain to its apogee, and inaugurated that country's Golden Age".^[33]

The Reformation swept through Europe during the 16th Century. The excommunication of Protestants by leaders of the Roman Catholic Church ended centuries of unity among Western Christendom. The refusal of Pope Clement VI to grant an annulment in the marriage of King Henry VIII to Catherine of Aragon saw Henry establish himself as supreme governor of the church in England. Mary I of England, was his eldest daughter. She succeeded the throne and executed her Protestant half-sister Lady Jane Grey who has been called the Nine Day Queen. Mary was the daughter of Catherine of Aragon, and thus remained loyal to Rome and sought to restore the Roman Church in England. Her re-establishment of Roman Catholicism was reversed after her death in 1558 by her successor and younger half-sister, Elizabeth I. Rivalry emerged between Elizabeth and the Catholic Mary Queen of Scots, finally settled with the execution of Mary in 1587. The religion of an heir or monarch's spouse complicated intermarriage between royal houses through coming centuries.

Consorts of the Holy Roman Emperors were given the title of Holy Roman Empress. The throne was reserved for males, though women such as Theophanu and Maria Theresa of Austria, controlled the power and served as de facto Empresses regnant. The powerful Maria Theresa acquired her right to the throne of the Habsburg monarchy by means of the Pragmatic Sanction of 1713, allowing for female succession—but had to fight the War of the Austrian Succession to secure her right to reign. Following victories, her husband, Francis Stephen, was chosen as Holy Roman Emperor in 1745, confirming Maria Theresa's status as a European leader. A liberal-minded autocrat, she was a patron of sciences and education and sought to alleviate the suffering of the serfs. On religion she pursued a policy of cujus regio, ejus religio, keeping Catholic observance at court and frowning on Judaism and Protestantism—but the ascent of her son as co-regnant Emperor saw restrictions placed on the power of the Church in the Empire. She reigned for 40 years, and had 16 children including Marie-Antoinette, the ill-fated Queen of France.^[34]

The Protestant Reformation, closed convents in Reformed areas which effectively closed off the option of a full-time religious role for Protestant women, as well as one which had provided some women a life in academic study.^[35]

However, some convents (such as Ebstorf Abbey near the town of Uelzen and Bursfelde Abbey in Bursfelde) adopted the Lutheran faith.^[36] Many of these convents in eastern Europe were closed by communist authorities after the Second World War. They are sometimes called damenstift. One notable damenstift member was Catharina von Schlegel (1697–1768) who wrote the hymn that was translated into English as Be still, my soul, the Lord is on thy side. Besides the Lüne abbeys, three exclusively female Lutheran orders for women open today are the Communität Casteller Ring, the Daughters of Mary, and the Evangelical Sisterhood of Mary. Although Communität Christusbruderschaft Selbitz is mixed, it is almost entirely female. However, other convents voluntarily folded during the Reformation. For example, following Catherine of Mecklenburg's choice to defy her Catholic husband and smuggle Lutheran books to Ursula of Munsterberg and other nuns, Ursula (in 1528) published 69 articles justifying their reasons to leave their convent. Martin Luther himself taught that "the wife should stay at home and look after the affairs of the household as one who has been deprived of the ability of administering those affairs that are outside and concern the state…."^[37] Among the many nuns who chose the domestic life over the monastic life was the wife of Martin Luther, Katherine von Bora. John Calvin agreed that "the woman's place is in the home."^[38]

The majority of Protestant churches upheld the traditional position,^[39] and restricted ruling and preaching roles within the Church to men until the 20th century, although there were early exceptions among some groups such as the Quakers and within some Pentecostal holiness movements.^[40]

In 1569 Lutheran Magdalena Heymair became the first woman ever to have her writings listed on the Index Librorum Prohibitorum. She published a series of pedagogical writings for elementary-age teaching and also wrote poetry. Calvinist Anne Locke was a translator and poet who published the first English sonnet sequence. In 1590, Christine of Hesse published the Lutheran psalm-book Geistliche Psalmen und Lieder.

John Knox (1510–1572) also denied women the right to rule in the civic sphere, as he asserted in his famous First Blast of the Trumpet Against the Monstrous Regiment of Women.

Baptist theologian Dr. John Gill (1690–1771) comments on 1 Corinthians 14:34,35, stating

In Gen_3:16, "thy desire shall be to thy husband, and he shall rule over thee". By this the apostle would signify, that the reason why women are not to speak in the church, or to preach and teach publicly, or be concerned in the ministerial function, is, because this is an act of power, and authority; of rule and government, and so contrary to that subjection which God in his law requires of women unto men. The extraordinary instances of Deborah, Huldah, and Anna, must not be drawn into a rule or example in such cases.^[41]

Methodist founder John Wesley (1703–1791) and Methodist theologian Adam Clarke (1762–1832) both upheld male headship, but allowed that spiritual Christian women could publicly speak in church meetings if they "are under an extraordinary impulse of the Spirit" (Wesley),^[42] and that such were to obey that influence, and that "the apostle lays down directions in chap. 11 for regulating her personal appearance when thus employed." (Clarke)^[43] Puritan theologian Matthew Poole (1624–1679) concurred with Wesley, adding, "But setting aside that extraordinary case of a special afflatus, [strong Divine influence] it was, doubtless, unlawful for a woman to speak in the church."^[44]

Matthew Henry (1662–1714) in his commentary, entertains allowing "praying, and uttering hymns inspired" by women, as such "were not teaching".^[45]

In A Very Short History of the World, Geoffrey Blainey wrote that, in removing the institution of the convent, the Reformation at first indirectly reduced the power of women, for convents had been places where women could achieve power and influence, as in Zurich where the Benedictine abbesses had helped administer the town. However, the Protestant belief that all people should be able to read the Bible, wrote Blainey, led to an increase in female literacy, as a result of the opening of new schools, and the introduction of compulsory education for boys and girls in places like Lutheran Prussia beginning in 1717.^[46]

A general tenet of the Protestant reformers was that Marian devotion and the 'cult of Mary" and the "cult of saints" should be rejected. Thus, in the communities of Europe and North America that adopted Protestantism, the centuries-old rituals and theology associated with Mary and formal sainthood that had been built up by the Catholic tradition were largely expunged in the aftermath of the Reformation. Apart from convents being closed, images of Mary were in many cases torn down or decapitated.^[26]

The Catholic Church meanwhile, responded to the Reformation with the Counter Reformation, which included a series of wars as well as exuberant baroque architecture and art was embraced as an affirmation of the faith and new seminaries and orders were established to lead missions to far off lands^[46] The importance of Marian devotion within Catholic life was kept firmly in place. Thus a new divide had arisen in Christianity: on the one hand Catholicism and Orthodoxy maintained Mary's place in Christian art and ritual; while on the other side, the new Protestant churches greatly reduced her significance.^[26] Many women were martyred during the Counter-Reformation, including the Guernsey Martyrs, three women martyred for Protestantism in 1556. One woman was pregnant and gave birth while being burned, the child was rescued but then ordered to be burned as well. Still other women, such as those living in the Defereggen Valley, were stripped of their children so they could be raised in Catholic in an institution.

Renaissance and Baroque art produced new depictions of women in Christian art. According to Kenneth Clarke, while Mary had been in the Middle Ages "the supreme protectress of civilization" who had "taught a race of tough and ruthless barbarians the virtues of tenderness and compassion", during the Renaissance, Mary "became also the human mother in whom everyone could recognise qualities of warmth and love and approachability". These human qualities were presented by Catholic artists like Raphael, in his Madonna and Child portraits representing Mary with the infant Jesus, and Michelangelo in his pieta statue, depicting Mary cradling the dead body of Jesus following his crucifixion. During the Baroque period, religious depictions of women in Catholic Europe became not only exuberant, but often highly sensual, as with the Ecstasy of Saint Teresa by Gian Lorenzo Bernini.^[26]

Amidst the backdrop of Industrial Revolution and expanding European Empires, a number of notable educational and nursing religious institutes were established by or for Catholic women during the 17th–19th centuries; Christian women played a central role in the developing or running of many the modern world's education and health care systems. Out of other Christian traditions arose women like Florence Nightingale, who assisted with the development of modern nursing.^[47] By the 21st century, several Protestant churches were ordaining women, but Christianity's heartlands were shifting away from Europe, and while vocations to the religious life were in decline in the West, conversions to Christianity and religious vocations were expanding rapidly in Africa and Asia.

Within Catholicism, the Sisters of Mercy was founded by Catherine McAuley in Dublin, Ireland, in 1831, and her nuns went on to establish hospitals and schools across the world.^[48] The Little Sisters of the Poor was founded in the mid-19th century by Saint Jeanne Jugan near Rennes, France, to care for the many impoverished elderly who lined the streets of French towns and cities.^[49] In Britain's Australian colonies, Australia's first canonised Saint, Mary MacKillop, co-founded the Sisters of St. Joseph of the Sacred Heart as educative religious institute for the poor in 1866 and by the time of her death her religious institute had established a 117 schools and had opened orphanages and refuges for the needy.^[50]

Many Christian women were instrumental in the movement for women's suffrage which achieved its first successes in Britain's Australasian colonies at the close of the 19th century and spread across the democratic world. In the United States, the Quaker Grimké sisters were early advocates of abolitionism and women's rights.^[51] In Australia, Unitarian preacher Catherine Helen Spence led calls for women's suffrage, and ran for political office after the South Australian Parliament became the first modern jurisdiction to allow women to do so.^[52] In North America, organizations like the Woman's Christian Temperance Union agitated for the same reforms.^[53]

For much of the early twentieth century, Catholic women continued to join religious institutes in large numbers, where their influence and control was particularly strong in the running of primary education for children, high schooling for girls, and in nursing, hospitals, orphanages and aged care facilities. The Second Vatican Council of the 1960s liberalised the strictures of Catholic religious life, particularly for women religious; however, in the latter half of the 20th century, vocations for women in the West entered a steep decline.

A number of beatifications and canonisations took place of Catholic women from all over the world: St. Josephine Bakhita was a Sudanese slave girl who became a Canossian nun; St. Katharine Drexel (1858–1955) worked for Native and African Americans; Polish mystic St. Maria Faustina Kowalska (1905–1938) wrote her influential spiritual diary;^[54] and German nun Edith Stein who was murdered at Auschwitz.^[55]

A number of Christian women are recalled as martyrs of the Second World War struggle against Nazism. Catholic Poland suffered under Nazi occupation, and a number of women are recognised for their heroism during the period: including 8 religious sisters and several laywomen of Poland's 108 Martyrs of World War II and the 11 Sisters of the Holy Family of Nazareth murdered by the Gestapo in 1943 and known as the Blessed Martyrs of Nowogródek. Swedish born Elisabeth Hesselblad was listed among the "righteous among the nations" by Yad Vashem for her religious institute's work assisting Jews escape The Holocaust.^[56] She and two British women, Mother Riccarda Beauchamp Hambrough and Sister Katherine Flanagan have been beatified for reviving the Swedish Bridgettine Order of nuns and hiding scores of Jewish families in their convent during Rome's period of occupation under the Nazis.^[57]

In modern times, after the Second Vatican Council, four Catholic women have been declared Doctors of the Church, indicating a re-appraisal of the role of women within the life of that Church: the 16th-century Spanish mystic St. Teresa of Ávila, the 14th Century Italian mystic St. Catherine of Siena, the 19th-century French nun St. Thérèse de Lisieux (called Doctor Amoris or Doctor of Love), and the 12th-century German nun St. Hildegard of Bingen.

While Catholicism and Orthodoxy adhered to traditional gender restrictions on ordination to the priesthood, ordination of women in Protestant churches has in recent decades become increasingly common. As of 1996, over half of all American Protestant denominations ordain women,^[58] though some restrict the official positions a woman can hold. For instance, some ordain women for the military or hospital chaplaincy but prohibit them from serving in congregational roles. However, one-third of all seminary students (and in some seminaries nearly half) are female.^[59][60]

The Salvation Army elected Evangeline Booth as its first female General (worldwide leader) in 1934. Army founder William Booth insisted on gender equality, writing in 1908 that "Every officer and soldier should insist upon the truth that woman is as important, as valuable, as capable and as necessary to the progress and happiness of the world as man" and women have been prominent in leadership positions in the history of the organisation.^[61]

Barbara Clementine Harris, became the first woman in the world to be ordained a bishop in the Episcopal Church in the US, part of the Anglican Communion.^[62] although British sovereigns including women—Elizabeth I, Mary II, Anne, Victoria and Elizabeth II have received the position of the Supreme Governor of the Church of England upon their accessions to the throne.

Among the most famous women missionaries of the period was Mother Teresa of Calcutta, who was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1979 for her work in "bringing help to suffering humanity".^[63] She was beatified in 2003, just six years after her death.^[64]

Many Christian women and religious have been prominent advocates in social policy debates—as with American nun Helen Prejean, a Sister of Saint Joseph of Medaille, who is a prominent campaigner against the death penalty and was the inspiration for the Hollywood film Dead Man Walking.^[65]

In 2016, it has been estimated that the female share (aged 20 years and over) of the World's Christian Population is between 52 and 53 percent.^[66][67] The Pew Research Center studied the effects of gender on religiosity throughout the world, finding that Christian women in 53 countries are generally more religious than Christian men.^[67] While Christians of both genders in African countries are equally likely to regularly attend services.^[67] In 2020, it has been estimated that the female share of the World's Christian Population is around 51.6%.^[68]

• Anglican Group for the Ordination of Women to the Historic Ministry existed from 1930 to 1978 to promote the equality of women in the church.^[69]
• New Testament household code
• Women in the Bible
• Women in Christianity
• Jesus' interactions with women
• Paul the Apostle and women
• List of Christian women of the early church