I never understood misogynistic Christian-Islamic-Jewish views of women.

No, not everyone of these faiths are misogynistic, but they still have a fair number who are and long histories of treating women badly.  Women and men can not perpetuate the tribe-community-society without each other.  How does treating one gender as less than perfect and as chattel further their children's well-being and health? 

I deliberately made that last sentence gender neutral as I see men and women both necessary for healthy, well-adjusted families and societies.

This is mere superficial observation and speculation, but I've been watching a TV series called Tribal Wives, where each week, a different British woman goes to live with a different tribe for a few weeks. The tribes are from all over the world and most of them have not been fully converted to Monotheism.

I've seen about ten episodes and in almost every one, the role of women is very similar. The men do the hunting and the women do the gathering and cooking and domestic chores, as well as acting as counsellers to the British women. Marriages are usually arranged by the tribal elders and the women are subservient to their husbands. Men and women often have separate initiation ceremonies. The women seem resigned to this and questioning tradition is taboo.

I'm sure that anthropologists have studied why this is, but it does seem to be a product of evolution and presumably gives tribes in those circumstances an advantage.

The above isn't necessarily strictly misogynistic, but the roots of misogyny seem to predate the Monotheistic religions. They just inherited it, manipulated it and furthered it, presumably because that gives their political organisation more success.

So, I don't really understand misogynistic Christian-Islamic-Jewish views of women either, but the role of women in non-Monotheistic religions often isn't great either.

X, you make a good point. But what about all of the ancient religions that were centered around goddess worship ? Isis was highly revered among both the Egyptians and the Romans (Aset was her name in Egypt) as well as several other pantheons of goddess worship in the ancient cultures. These were more highly advanced civilizations than hunter/gatherer tribes of course, but still, there have been a few historical findings of fertility worship and feminine worship among ancient civilizations.

Particularly the Egyptians that had female rulers that were almost as important as the pharoahs.

Just saying.

There was a book I picked up when I had first left Christianity, called : "When god was a woman" (I can't remember the article). Now some critics said it was accurate and others said it was not.

I am sure there are people on here that are more knowledgeable than I about this.

There were exceptions -

Perhaps the Iroquois or the Navajos.  Perhaps the Celts before the christian missionaries came through.

It is true that women largely handle the farming, child raising, and house keeping while the men go hunting in almost every society, regardless how inheritance is handled in that society.  I think this is just biological reality as women have the babies.  And nursing a child until they are 4 or 5 years old as many hunter-gatherer cultures did, really puts a damper on your hunting abilities.

No, I certainly accept that my argument has flaws.

As you can see, I've been reading this fellow lately:

http://deusdiapente.blogspot.com.au/2011/09/monotheism-is-inherently-intolerant-and.html

He mentions Hector Avalos, whose theory is that it all went downhill when monotheism was invented, which is something I've long suspected.

The goddesses (eg Yahweh's Asherah) were killed off and Big Daddy ruled almost alone. In Catholicism though, with 'The Blessed Virgin' and the saints, some semi-goddesses remain.

I'm not sure that one could say that many ancient religions were centred around goddess worship. Most of the Egyptian deities were male. The polytheists had a god(dess) for every occasion.

Looks like I need to do some more reading.

This is a huge topic, so I too hope that a more knowledgable person wanders in. In the meantime I'll try to add the odd snippet as I stumble across them.

http://www.umich.edu/~kelseydb/Exhibits/WomenandGender/relig.html

discusses women in ancient Egypt and seems accurate.

"To some extent, the gendered activities of Egyptian deities mirrored the lives of their mortal worshippers. Thus, the kings, rulers, fighters, and administrators of the gods tend to be male, while goddesses serve as queens, nurturers, childbearers, and protectors of the gods."

So, the goddesses were very important, but the religion wasn't strictly centred around them.

There were a few powerful women in Egypt, but again I think that they were significantly in the minority.

"Throughout ancient Egyptian history, roles in religious employment were connected to the gender of the employee. In general, men were in charge of temples and their administration, but women filled a variety of religious offices in the Pharaonic period, especially as priestesses associated with the cults of such goddesses as Hathor. By the New Kingdom, however, the priesthood had become part of the state bureaucracy, which excluded women. As if to compensate, we find an increase in the number of elite women associated with temples as "musicians" of a particular deity. In the Graeco-Roman period, women filled various priestly roles. Under Christianity, however, they were again excluded from formal religious office in Egypt. Female officiants were often associated with the cults of female deities, although by far the most common female religious titles relate to the worship of male gods. Similarly, male priests often officiated for goddesses."

Also see http://www.umich.edu/~kelseydb/Exhibits/WomenandGender/power.html

Re God as a woman,

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gender_and_religion states:

The earliest documented religions, and some contemporary animist religions, involve deification of characteristics of the natural world. These spirits are typically, but not always, gendered. It has been proposed, since the 19th century, that polytheism arose out of animism, as religious epic provided personalities to autochthonous animist spirits in various parts of the world, notably in the development of ancient near eastern and Indo-European literature. Polytheistic gods are also typically gendered. The earliest evidence of monotheism is the worship of the goddess Eurynome, Aten in Egypt, the teaching of Moses in the Hebrew Bible and Zoroastrianism in Persia. Aten, Yahweh and Ahura Mazda are all masculine deities, embodied only in metaphor, so masculine rather than reproductively male.

Various 19th century scholars^[who?] of comparative religion proposed that prehistoric animism worshipped nature viewed predominantly as matriarchal religion, a feature notable also within neopaganism. However, anthropological research of the early 20th century, among many pre-literate cultures, established a consensus against this theory.^{[citation needed]}

I don't have time to look further into this at the moment, but Eurynome may be the one you are after, though a cursory examination shows her to be a creator god rather than a sole god.

I had a quick look at women and goddesses in Hinduism/Buddhism, but that is a bridge too far.

From this and other things I've seen, it seems to be generally discredited; though again, somebody may know better.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/When_God_Was_a_Woman

Drawing upon the work of Margaret Murray and Robert Graves, Stone postulates a prehistoric matriarchal religion, painting ancient societies, including Ancient Egypt as matriarchal paradises, destroyed by the patriarchal Indo-Europeans. She concludes that the Hebrew Levites, because of their clearly patriarchal outlook "must have been Indo-Europeans", alleging misogyny and hatred of goddess worship within Israelite society, which she connects to the later development of Christianity. According to her the Bible was an attempt to change that symbolism and celebrate the victory of male oriented rites and gods.

The book reflects the rise of feminist theology in the 1970s to 1980s, along with authors such as Elizabeth Gould Davis, Riane Eisler and Marija Gimbutas. However, Murray's work, on which Stone based her own book, has been roundly criticized by many historians who argue that Murray selectively cited data and deliberately distorted evidence

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Myth_of_Matriarchal_Prehistory

The Myth of Matriarchal Prehistory: Why An Invented Past Will Not Give Women a Future is a book by Cynthia Eller that seeks to deconstruct the theory of a prehistoric matriarchy. This hypothesis, she says, developed in 19th century scholarship and was taken up by 1970s second wave feminism following Marija Gimbutas. Eller, a professor of Women's Studies and Religious Studies at Montclair State University, argues in the book that this theory is mistaken and its continued defence is harmful to the feminist agenda.

She argues that the feminist archaeology of Marija Gimbutas had a large part in constructing a myth of historical matriarchy by examining Eastern Europe cultures that she asserts, by and large, never really bore any resemblance in character to the alleged universal matriarchy suggested by Gimbutas or Graves. She says that in "actually documented primitive societies" of recent (historical) times, paternity is never ignored and that the sacred status of goddesses does not automatically increase female social status, and believes that this affirms that utopian matriarchy is simply an inversion of antifeminism. Eller concludes that "inventing prehistoric ages in which women and men lived in harmony and equality is a burden that feminists need not, and should not bear." In her view, the "matriarchal myth" tarnishes the feminist movement by leaving it open to accusations of "vacuousness and irrelevance that we cannot afford to court."

Eller's book has been criticised for mischaracterising the theories of Gimbutas and other key anthropologists, labelling them as "matriarchalist" despite most of these scholars rejecting ideas of matriarchy (female rulership) in favour of matrifocal or matrilineal societies. Eller is criticised for downplaying opposing evidence,^[2] constructing straw-doll arguments, analysing several scholars' work only through secondary sources, providing scant evidence for her own position that male dominance has until recently been virtually universal, and adopting an openly derisive tone towards feminist spirituality.

    That's like asking why a black person would join a Southern Baptist church denomination.   In fact The Southern Baptist Convention just elected it first black President , Rev Fred Luter.  I guess these blacks have short memories.

Veneration of the Virgin Mother in the religion that I was brought up in was very high. I offered up as many prayers to Mary as I did the mythical Jesus.

The say there is a great resemblance to the Mary-Isis parallel, but I do not see it.

Isis, was married to her brother Osiris, conceived Horus through the phallus that she created through magic, etc.

The reason I point that out, is for the benefit of many people that say the story of Jesus and Mary, along with Isis/Horus are identical when arguing against Christianity ( one of the main reasons that I disliked the Zeitgeist films so much) and those parallels do not exist.

Horus was a god, not a demi-god, he did not have 12 followers, he was noted for battling the Egyptian god Set ( the equivalent of the christian Satan) but that is about all.