This is a timeline of women in religion. See also: Timeline of women in religion in the United States, and Timeline of women's ordination.

Timeline

Ancient history and Middle Ages 8th–7th century BCE Livy, Plutarch, and Aulus Gellius attribute the creation of the Vestal Virgins as a state-supported priestesshood to king Numa Pompilius, who reigned circa 717–673 BC. 6th century BCE Mahapajapati Gotami, the aunt and foster mother of Buddha, became the first woman to receive Buddhist ordination. 2nd century CE Shlama Beth Qidra is the earliest attested Mandaean scribe and copied the Left Ginza from the Mandaean holy book Ginza Rabba.Buckley, Jorunn Jacobsen. The Mandaeans: Ancient Texts and Modern People. Oxford University Press, 2002.p4 4th century The Temple of Vesta was closed in 391 by the Roman emperor Theodosius I, and Coelia Concordia, the last vestal virgin in history and the last Vestalis Maxima or Chief Vestal, stepped down from her post in 394. 5th century Prajñātārā was the twenty-seventh Indian Patriarch of Zen Buddhism and teacher of Bodhidharma. While Prajñātārā has generally been assumed to be male and is listed among the Chan Patriarchs (all of whom are male), 20th century Buddhist practitioners have suggested that Prajñātārā might have been a woman. 735: The Latin Church decided that women must be allowed to attend liturgies and receive Holy Communion during their menstruation. 8th century Andal, the only female Alvar, was active at this time,Encyclopedia of Women in World Religions: Faith and Culture Across History 2 Volumes. Editor Susan de-Gaia. pg. 367. United States: ABC-CLIO, 2018. although hagiographic tradition asserts that Andal lived around 3000 BCE. (Orthodoxy posits the number of Alvars as ten, though there are other references that include Andal and Madhurakavi Alvar, making the number twelve.) 13th century The first female Zen master in Japan was the Japanese abbess Mugai Nyodai (born 1223 – died 1298).

17th to 18th centuries 17th century: Asenath Barzani is considered the first female rabbi of Jewish history by some scholars; additionally, she is the oldest recorded female Kurdish leader in history.Kurdish Asenath Barzani, the first Jewish woman in history to become a Rabbi, ekurd.net; accessed 25 December 2016. 17th century: In England in the 17th century Elizabeth Hooton became the first female Quaker minister. 1636 to 1643: Though she predates the start of the United States by over 100 years, the influence of Anne Hutchinson on later American Colonial values with respect to civil liberty and religious freedoms was as important as her contemporary Roger Williams. 1660: British Quaker Margaret Fell (1614–1702) published a famous pamphlet to justify equal roles for men and women in the denomination, titled: "Women's Speaking Justified, Proved and Allowed of by the Scriptures, All Such as Speak by the Spirit and Power of the Lord Jesus And How Women Were the First That Preached the Tidings of the Resurrection of Jesus, and Were Sent by Christ's Own Command Before He Ascended to the Father (John 20:17)." Circa 1770: Mary Evans Thorne was appointed class leader by Joseph Pilmore in Philadelphia, making her probably the first woman in America to be so appointed. 1774: Ann Lee and her followers arrive in New York City. 1775: Ann Lee and her followers establish the first communal home of the United Society of Believers in Christ's Second Appearance (aka the Shakers) seven miles West of Albany, NY. 1775: In his encyclical Allatae Sunt of 26 July 1755, Pope Benedict XIV explicitly condemned females serving the priest at the altar with the following words: "Pope Gelasius in his ninth letter (chap. 26) to the bishops of Lucania condemned the evil practice which had been introduced of women serving the priest at the celebration of Mass. Since this abuse had spread to the Greeks, Innocent IV strictly forbade it in his letter to the bishop of Tusculum: "Women should not dare to serve at the altar; they should be altogether refused this ministry." We too have forbidden this practice in the same words in Our oft-repeated constitution Etsi Pastoralis, sect. 6, no. 21." Late 18th century: John Wesley allowed women to preach within his Methodist movement.

19th century 19th century: Women's mosques, called nusi, and female imams have existed since the 19th century in China and continue today. 19th century: Hannah Rachel Verbermacher, also known as the Maiden of Ludmir (Ludmirer Moyd), became the only female Rebbe in the history of the Hasidic movement; she lived in Ukraine and Israel. Early 19th century: In the United States, in contrast with almost every other organized denomination, the Society of Friends (Quakers) has allowed women to serve as ministers since the early 19th century. 1807: The Primitive Methodist Church in Britain first allowed female ministers. 1810: The Christian Connection Church, an early relative of the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) and the United Church of Christ, ordained women as early as 1810. 1815: Clarissa Danforth was ordained in New England. She was the first woman ordained by the Free Will Baptist denomination. The first petition for the African Methodist Episcopal Church General Conference to license women to preach was defeated. 1830: In Harmony, PA, Emma Hale Smith was promised that she would be ordained "to expound scriptures, and to exhort the church, according as it shall be given thee by my Spirit" (Doctrine and Covenants, 25:7). 1831: The practice of polygamy was established in the Latter Day Saint movement, potentially as early as 1831. 1838: In this year, according to Tenrikyo's doctrine, Nakayama Miki was settled as the Shrine of Tsukihi and the Tenrikyo teachings were founded. 1842: Emma Hale Smith became the first president of the Woman's Organization known as the Relief Society for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints in 1842. 1843: Women were first included in Mormon prayer circles on September 28, 1843. 1844: Elizabeth Peabody became the first person to translate any Buddhist scripture into English, translating a chapter of the Lotus Sutra from its French translation. 1845: Rabbis attending the Frankfort Synod of the emerging Reform Judaism declared that women count in a minyan, a formalization of a customary Reform practice dating back to 1811. 1848: The Conference of Badasht was held that set in motion the public existence and promulgation of the Bábí religion. Around eighty men and Táhirih attended the conference. The conference is considered by Bábís and Bahá'ís as a signal moment that demonstrated that Islamic Sharia law had been abrogated and superseded by Bábí law, as well as a key demonstration of the thrust of raising the social position of women. 1853: Antoinette Brown Blackwell was the first woman ordained as a minister in the United States. She was ordained by a church belonging to the Congregationalist Church. However, her ordination was not recognized by the denomination. She later quit the church and became a Unitarian. The Congregationalists later merged with others to create the United Church of Christ, which ordains women. 1861: Women were appointed as deaconesses in the Church of England from 1861, but they could not function fully as deacons and were not considered ordained clergy. 1861: Mary A. Will was the first woman ordained in the Wesleyan Methodist Connection by the Illinois Conference in the United States. The Wesleyan Methodist Connection eventually became the Wesleyan Church. 1863: The Seventh-day Adventist Church was founded; one of its founders was a woman, Ellen G. White. Olympia Brown was ordained by the Universalist denomination in 1863, the first woman ordained by that denomination, in spite of a last-moment case of cold feet by her seminary which feared adverse publicity. After a decade and a half of service as a full-time minister, she became a part-time minister in order to devote more time to the fight for women's rights and universal suffrage. In 1961, the Universalists and Unitarians joined to form the Unitarian Universalist Association (UUA). The UUA became the first large denomination to have a majority of female ministers. 1865: The Salvation Army was founded, which in the English Methodist tradition always ordained both men and women. However, there were initially rules that prohibited a woman from marrying a man who had a lower rank. 1866: Helenor M. Davison was ordained as a deacon by the North Indiana Conference of the Methodist Protestant Church, probably making her the first ordained woman in the Methodist tradition. 1866: Margaret Newton Van Cott becomes the first woman to be licensed to preach in The Methodist Episcopal Church. 1868: Female Shinto priests were largely pushed out of their positions in 1868.Nelson, John K. (1996). A Year in the Life of a Shinto Shrine. pg. 123. Seattle and London: University of Washington Press. . 1869: Margaret Newton Van Cott became the first woman in the Methodist Episcopal Church to receive a local preacher's license. Lydia Sexton (of the United Brethren Church) was appointed chaplain of the Kansas State Prison at the age of 70, the first woman in the United States to hold such a position. 1871: Celia Burleigh became the first female Unitarian minister. 1872: The Japanese government issued an edict (May 4, 1872, Grand Council of State Edict 98) stating, "Any remaining practices of female exclusion on shrine and temple lands shall be immediately abolished, and mountain climbing for the purpose of worship, etc., shall be permitted". However, women in Japan today do not have complete access to all such places. 1873: Unitarian minister Martha Turner (1839–1915) became the first female minister in Australia. 1876: Anna Oliver became the first woman to graduate from a Methodist seminary, receiving a Bachelor of Divinity from Boston University School of Theology. Julia Evelina Smith's 1876 Bible translation, titled The Holy Bible: Containing the Old and New Testaments; Translated Literally from the Original Tongues, is considered the first complete translation of the Bible into English by a woman. 1879: The Church of Christ, Scientist was founded by a woman, Mary Baker Eddy. 1880: Anna Howard Shaw was the first woman ordained in the Methodist Protestant Church, an American church which later merged with other denominations to form the United Methodist Church. Madame Blavatsky and Colonel Olcott became the first Westerners to receive the refuges and precepts, the ceremony by which one traditionally becomes a Buddhist; thus Blavatsky was the first Western woman to do so.Current Perspectives in Buddhism: Buddhism today : issues & global dimensions, Madhusudan Sakya, Cyber Tech Publications, 2011, page 244 1884: Marion Macfarlane became the first woman to be ordained in the Anglican Church in Australia, when she was ordained to the "Female Diaconate" in 1884 in the Diocese of Melbourne. 1884: Julie Rosewald, called "Cantor Soprano" by her congregation, became America's first female cantor, serving San Francisco's Temple Emanu-El from 1884 until 1893, although she was not ordained. She was born in Germany. 1886: Louise "Lulu" Fleming became the first black woman to be commissioned for career missionary service by the Women's Baptist Foreign Missionary Society of the West. 1888: Sarah E. Gorham became the first woman missionary of the African Methodist Episcopal Church appointed to a foreign field. Fidelia Gillette may have been the first ordained woman in Canada. She served the Universalist congregation in Bloomfield, Ontario, during 1888 and 1889. She was presumably ordained in 1888 or earlier. 1889: The Nolin Presbytery of the Cumberland Presbyterian Church ordained Louisa Woosley as the first female minister of the Cumberland Presbyterian Church, USA.