Ashley Purpura was a Woman of the Week in 2022. She has recently published a new book entitled, “Women in the Orthodox Tradition: Feminism, Theology, and Equality”. We sat down with her to talk about what led to this book and what she wants Orthodox women to know about it:
“This book took a few years to come together. It wasn’t any single event that sparked it; I’ve been reflecting on these questions since my undergraduate studies in religion, when I first encountered feminist theology in other traditions. I’ve always cared deeply about how women are represented in Orthodoxy and how our tradition’s sources shape our understanding of gender. But more recently, my young daughters began asking me questions that pushed me to think more seriously about gender and equality from a theological standpoint.
“I could wrestle with gender differences and inequalities in the Church on my own, as many women do, treating them as opportunities for humility and obedience. But when I tell my daughters (and sons) that gender discrimination is wrong, and then they encounter it in church, I feel the need to articulate a clearer response—for them, for myself, and for others.
“I needed to explain that the Church carries a kind of patriarchal bias that doesn’t align with Orthodox theology or with how we understand God. Even though patriarchy remains embedded and normalized in many of our sources and customs, we can still call it out as theologically problematic because it dehumanizes women. My daughters are eight; they won’t read the book now, but maybe one day it will offer them insight, new ways of thinking, or even comfort as they consider their place in the Church.
“My children helped inspire this book, but I also wrote it in response to people who had asked, ‘Yes, but what does the Tradition say about women in the Church? What do the Fathers say?’ I realized that many Fathers—and even some Mothers—and so many of our sources reflect patriarchal privilege because of their historical and cultural contexts, as well as the patriarchal clerical authority that elevated them as important voices. Historically, women had limited access to shaping the written tradition. But our faith, our theology, doesn’t have to remain confined by those same limits.
“Our tradition often affirms the potential spiritual equality of women—they can become saints just as men do. But the Church still struggles with fully embracing women’s humanity. Sometimes church leaders will say, ‘That’s just our culture,’ or ‘That was a problem of the past.’ I’m not trying to dismantle Orthodoxy or throw out the baby with the bathwater. But I do believe we need to rethink how we express the faith—especially as it relates to over half of the Church.
“The way we treat people in their particular bodies and contexts carries theological weight because Christ took on our humanity and was born of a woman. We’re a Church that honors both humanity and divinity—and the humanity within the divinity. It becomes a Christological problem when we say, ‘Spiritually, women are equal, so the rest doesn’t matter.’ That kind of thinking divides the person into a disembodied spirit. How do we reconcile the parts of our tradition that teach us about the human relationship with God while also denigrating half of humanity? We can’t just cherry-pick. We need to revisit these sources with a lens that sees God with women, advocating for them, and honoring their full humanity—not just in spirit, but also in the Church.
“One resource I find especially valuable—for both women and men—is the apophatic tradition in theology. It invites us to say, ‘Yes, this is the faith of our fathers, but there is more.’ We can challenge the perceived limits of tradition and create space where women’s voices and identities have gone unheard. So much of God’s work hasn’t been recorded. But our tradition offers models for creatively imagining what might be unrecorded yet still true—take the hymnic tradition, for example. We can rethink tradition in light of women’s lives, acknowledge what’s missing, and reject patriarchal constraints that blind us to where God has been active.
“Historically, women have held deep ownership of the faith, even while lacking comparable official roles in Church leadership. Ethnographies and articles have documented the many unofficial roles women have taken on in Orthodoxy. Women have remained faithful and active in an institution ostensibly led by men. But when we point to these women—or to the Theotokos or female saints—and say, ‘See, women already play important roles; there’s no gender inequality,’ we miss the bigger picture. We ignore how these women earned recognition within a patriarchal system. We risk normalizing the idea that women’s holiness must always exist within a man’s world, and we overlook the new possibilities for holiness and ministry that God might be revealing.
“Take the Theotokos. Many women don’t relate to her primarily as a model of purity and humility. They see her as a mother navigating the pain of a suffering child or the daily work of caring for others. Yes, we honor her as a strong protector, but those representations often don’t make her relatable to women living today. Our liturgical commemorations often differ from the ways women actually engage with these sainted figures. We view them through an androcentric lens. And many traditional sources imply that to be a godly woman, one must either submit entirely in quietude or reject one’s femininity altogether by ‘becoming manly.’ There’s rarely space for the average woman to be fully herself in all her diversity.
“This tokenizing mentality—‘Well, we have these few sainted or ecclesially influential women, so we don’t need to address women’s concerns’—misses what God might be doing in women’s lives today. It limits how God might be calling us to respond to unjust, human-made gender constraints. The conversation around the deaconess reflects this dynamic. Despite women repeatedly asking for the Church to ordain deaconesses, people point to priests’ wives, lay counselors, or other women already serving informally. They treat these roles as sufficient, ignoring the deeper call for an ordained role that exists in our tradition and carries sacramental blessing. Women have done remarkable things under constraints, but that doesn’t mean we should glorify those constraints.
“One goal in my writing is to dismantle the notion that women in leadership or ministry are simply grabbing power or acting out of pride. In one chapter, I explore how the Church often intensifies expectations of obedience and humility for women and others already socialized into submission by a patriarchal culture. Instead of offering freedom from those conditions, the Church sometimes reinforces them through ascetic values. Imagine if the Church advocated for women instead. I’m not denying the value of humility or obedience, but many women might grow more spiritually through affirmations of self-care, self-advocacy, and the assurance that God cherishes their full humanity. Their bodies are not shameful. God desires them to be free and whole in Him.
“Many patriarchal assumptions about women and their bodies persist in our tradition. But recognizing them as culturally contingent helps us avoid treating them as absolute—especially when discerning vocations. The Incarnation shows us that our human experience—including our gender, context, and social location—shapes how we know each other, how we know God, and how we grow in faith. I don’t want to diminish the importance of the body; our gendered experiences still matter. But I wrestle with how liturgical texts and traditions sometimes elevate those gender constraints as sacred truths. We sing hymns that speak of weak women putting on manly strength, casting masculinity as holier. That contradicts our teachings about the divinization of women. In my view, we need to challenge and unsay those limits, and instead affirm the fullness of each individual in Christ.
“In this book, I’ve tried to put my research and reflections on the page. If it helps even one person, I’ll feel it was worth writing. Beyond my children, I often write with my mother in mind—she still lives with me and has lived a life of deep faith within a Church that often limits how she can be both Orthodox and a woman. Sometimes we just need to say things that many people already know or have experienced but haven’t seen written down. This book attempts to advocate for women’s equality from within a tradition that remains deeply entangled with patriarchy—so that others might see that advocating for change can come from within the faith, not outside it.”
Thank you, Ashley!
Use the code 14FF20 for 20% off the book: https://undpress.nd.edu/9780268209223/women-in-the-orthodox-tradition/