I'm not a woman, so I can't speak from personal experience. Nor have I lived "down through the ages," so that puts another limit on my experience.
Moreover, I have insufficient knowledge of the world's religions, so I'm not in a good position to assess how well or badly women have fared across the board.
Even with all available data in hand, however, I suspect that the evidence would show that some have fared well and some have fared badly, but I wouldn't even try to quantify how well or how badly.
This leads me to want to distinguish between faith and religion. I'd like to focus on faith. I suspect that women in all ages, including our own, have a better--far better--record as believers than men. I look at Mary, the mother of Jesus, and see her as a woman of faith. Her greatest virtue was faith.
Are women, by nature, more trusting? I can't say. Are women more likely than men to trust God and to entrust themselves to God? I think so. And that to me is the meaning of faith. Over the years women, it seems to me, have fared well on that front.
Religion--institutional and formal--would, I think, fare better if it had higher regard for the faith that women bring with them to the religious bodies with which they identify.
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