Women's Socioeconomic Status and Religious Leadership in Asia Minor

Rethinking the socioeconomic status of women in the Roman world. Moving beyond discussions of patriarchy and prescribed "women's roles" in the Roman world - discussions that have relied too much on elite literary sources, in her view - Katherine Bain explores what inscriptional data from Asia Minor can tell us about the actual socioeconomic status of women in the first and second centuries C.E. Her findings suggest that women's leadership in social associations - and by implication in Jewish and Christian congregations as well - was even more frequent than has been imagined. -- Book Cover