ABSTRACT
That the status of the Jewish woman, both in religious and social lives of the community, compares unfavourably with that of her Gentile sisters is hardly to be disputed. Of course, reference is now being made to the increasing number of women who show a strong bent towards public work and whose experience endows them with width of outlook and maturity of judgment. It is but a few years back since opinion has veered in favour of woman’s entry into the public life of the community, limited though it still is; previously to that, custom and prejudice combined in attributing to her intrinsic inferiority. The Reform movement in the Christian Church affected the position of women but little until people reach the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, when the formation of many dissenting and nonconformist bodies materially improved it. The Quakers have always placed women upon a religious equality with men, and the Wesleyans, Congregationalists, Baptists, Presbyterians, and Unitarians followed suit.
