On the whole, women have fared badly in religions down the ages, though
others may have a different view. But it may not always have been like
this.
There are some hints in the Hebrew Bible of a better situation
before the patriarchy that seems ingrained in the text. Some people think
that the story of Rebecca being met by Abraham's servant Eliezer and taken
to marry Isaac is in fact a relic of an earlier style of family/tribe
organisation, e.g fratriarchy, where the eldest brother and mother makes
the decisions about the family. Others just think that her father was
dead, since he does not appear.
We don't know, but in any case it is worth thinking that what is now distinctly patriarchal, but being changed in non-Orthodox Judaism (Reform, Conservative etc.), may have had some earlier antecedents.
But in most religions, with the possible exception of those
sections of religions that have made a point of women's equality, women
have been less than equal.
The interesting question is whether they are
now gaining greater equality, or whether the gains they are making in
those sections that allow them equality have to be offset by those
sections of religion that treat them as second-class citizens, possibly
even worse than in previous generations.
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