I’m sure it’s been done. I’d like to read something on this that’s truly objective: The impact of the Reformation on the status of European women.   I’m reading through some materials on the reformers and Mary Magdalene, and encountering not only the expected misogyny, but, in addition a contempt for single, independent women (aka, translated into the period – women not married, aka women in religious communities, although they’re not exactly "independent.) – and the strong sense that all women, without exception, should be married and under the authority of a husband. Much later, in the early modern period, especially with the advent of Wesleyan innovations, you find a tolerance for female preaching (I know, I’m conflating scads of issues here, and not taking into accout socio-economic changes), but I’m just wondering if, in that 16th-18th century period in Reformation countries, the perceieved role and purpose of women actually shifted in a less-independent paradigm than it was withing traditional Catholic thinking?