In the dissertation, the essence and specifics of the transformation of the status and role of a woman in the religious context are clarified on the example of Protestant denominations. The stages of the evolution of views on sex and gender are revealed in the Christian tradition in general and in Protestantism, in particular. The Holy Scriptures are analyzed on the subject of gender differentiation, as well as the influence of feminist theology as the most powerful spiritual and intellectual manifestation of the feminist movement, which has led to the transformation of the status and role of a woman in religion. The preconditions for the realization of social and legal equality of women are clarified, which has found its partial manifestation in the spread of women’s ordination and the expansion of women’s spheres of influence on the practical activities of Protestant churches. The specifics of social status and the role of a woman in Orthodoxy and Catholicism are determined, where traditional views remain constant and their main differences are outlined in comparison with Protestantism, which originally inherited the status stereotypes of the perception of a woman, but evolved significantly in this context. The criteria for distinguishing these differences are gender relations in marriage, the temple, the problem of female ordination, and sexual relations. The features of the interpretation of the status of women in Catholicism and Protestantism are highlighted.
The features of the emergence and formation of the problematics of gender relations are characterized, which arose as a result of the evolutionary development of views on the difference between a man and a woman. Their essence and dynamics of development come down to the fact that at the early stage, the dominant principles were, above all, the physiological differences between a man and a woman, and they explained gender inequality. But later, starting with the medieval appeal to ethos and the revision of the binary oppositions of the Holy Scriptures, it came to the abstraction that formed the idea of gender as a sociocultural construct. In this way, the concept of sex with its biological determinism was de-actualized, and the gender inequality arising from biblical precepts and based on stereotypes of Orthodoxy and Catholicism was significantly corrected.
It is determined that among the main factors that influenced the dynamics of the transformation of the status and role of a woman in Protestantism was the spread of feminist tendencies, which, above all, manifested themselves in two forms: as a movement aimed at involving women in pastoral activities and as a direction the purpose of including women in the church hierarchy. It was found that the rethinking of the status and role of a woman in the Protestant environment was facilitated by external factors and, above all, the growing political weight of the feminist movement with its struggle for electoral, property, and marriage rights, as well as a strong condemnation of gender discrimination (opposition to family and domestic violence). Nevertheless, an important place was given to the civilization factor, and even more so to the development of self-awareness of female parishioners and the formation of female pastorship, which later became a powerful tool to resist certain traditional social and religious guidelines of discriminatory nature.
