Okay I get it. How could I not? I've heard it pretty much all my life : the worst thing a Christian can be is Gnostic.
So I understand the knee-jerk reflex, and poking it with yer 10 foot pole.
But it was late 1st c. and early 2nd c. reactions against the Gnostics that shaped the orthodoxy. Out of that struggle came the hierarchical church, with Rome the top authority of God on the earth.
And I don't consider that good or true, which I think most out here would easily agree with ... I would hope.
But neither would I advise anyone to become a Gnostic, of any clan -- and there were competing clans of Gnostics. Even they couldn't agree with each other ... like Christians today. In that sense all Christians are Gnostics ... or like human, maybe.
But before we jump into the differences between the orthodox and the Gnostics concerning women -- if we do -- I found this nugget in Pagel's book on The Gnostic Gospels :
Jérôme Carcopino, in a discussion entitled "Feminism and Demoralization," explains that by the second century A.D., upper-class women often insisted upon "living their own life." Male satirists complained of their aggressiveness in discussions of literature, mathematics, and philosophy, and ridiculed their enthusiasm for writing poems, plays, and music.
Under the Empire, women were everywhere involved in business, social life, such as theaters, sports events, concerts, parties, travelling—with or without their husbands. They took part in a whole range of athletics, even bore arms and went to battle, and made major inroads into professional life.
Women of the Jewish communities, on the other hand, were excluded from actively participating in public worship, in education, and in social and political life outside the family.
~~ Elaine Pagels. The Gnostic Gospels (Kindle Locations 1549-1554). Kindle Edition.