It is worth recognising that it was Christianity, largely through the work of Paul, that first bestowed full personhood on everybody in Roman-influenced society. Prior to Paul's interpretation of the new covenant brought by Jesus wives, children and slaves were all property of the pater familias (head of the household) under Roman law. A Husband/Father literally held the power of life and death over all members of his household. So to state that Christianity is essentially patriarchal is not strictly correct if one takes into consideration just how fundamentally altering was its message of equality. In the first century, as part of a festival honoring his own godhead, the Emperor Nero compelled all women in Rome, high born and low, to work as prostitutes for male citizens, free men and slaves without any right of refusal. Christians abhorred that licentiousness and were killed en masse trying to protect the dignity of all women, not just their own. St Paul , really one of the fathers of mainstream Christianity in both the Latin and Eastern traditions, was one likely martyred at this time for his defence of women.
However, while these first century Christians were very courageous, there is a substantive criticism of Christianity running from St Paul to the present, in that it has never fully resolved the line of demarcation between the civil and religious realms. When in a misogynistic civil context, it has tended to let civil culture set the standard for gender roles based on its earliest Judaic traditions. But it has done so in the belief that monogamous marriages best respect the personhood of both men and women allowing neither to be the chattel of the other or be used in a chattel or transactional like manner.
