Donna

Woman · This entry investigates the significant roles women from various social backgrounds played in the radical Reformation and nonconformist religious movements of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, highlighting their active contributions as prophets, missionaries, writers, and organizers. Drawing on historiographical debates and on case studies of women dissenters, it challenges simplistic narratives of women’s declining influence over time, and it examines how they navigated patriarchal structures, often adopting creative strategies to exercise leadership and foster solidarity.