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This is a short explanation of just what happened to woman during the development of the Church in classical times and the middle ages. It wasn't so much Christianity itself that was the problem, but two other factors.

1. Many of the cultures that Christianity interacted with had a misogynistic streak to them. Because Paul's writings were embedded in the earliest spread of Christian documents, men who had similar problems with sex or woman in general were attracted to the early Church.

2. Later, when the Western Church became a political entity with an interest in centralizing power, it used patristic writings by jerks like Jerome to systematically repress female power within the church, since female religeouses tended to call on a combination of scholarship and mystical power to create opposition, often in fringe areas of Catholic power. (In other words, female power tended to strengthen national churches over the power of bishops and cardinals). This was considered dangerous, disruptive, and seriously subversive. The more Rome pushed for centralized power, the more they clamped down on women, heretics, Jews, and homosexuals.

Not all pagan cultures were good to women. Greek culture at the time of the rise of Christianity was very negative toward women, although not in the same way as classical culture. Roman culture, although significantly better than Greek, had a strong misogynistic tradition. It was Teutonic to a certain extent, and Celtic, to a larger extent, culture that had a more positive attitude toward women.