Women and Gender in Ancient Religions

What was religion like for women in the ancient Mediterranean world? What experiences, emotions, and constraints characterized women’s religious lives? What was public and what was private? What were the family issues involved? How were religions gendered? Were there major differences between religions that included goddesses and priestesses, and those that did not? Were notions of gender fixed or fluid? Could they enable religious freedoms for women? We will explore these and other questions through a consideration of religions Greek, Roman, Jewish, and Christian between roughly 500 BCE and 500 CE, with a focus on the Roman Empire. Discussion