Strictly talking about gender not race or status. Also, I believe Pagan philosophy regarded women pretty high as they were Priestesses and oracles of high regard. It would be more palatable to pagans if women were in leadership roles. This is why Mary was venerated at an early point in Roman Christianity eventually receiving the status of "queen of heaven". But I am going off topic interesting study though!
" Communication with a god was no small matter, and not just anyone could be allowed or trusted to serve this venerated position. It was decided that a pure, chaste and honest young virgin would be the most appropriate vessel for such a divine role."
We can't be strict about gender, not race or status, if we are going to make an argument that women cannot be leaders because the twelve apostles were all male. They also weren't Gentiles and they also weren't Chinese among many other races. The argument completely falls apart.
Pagan philosophy did not rate women very highly at all. Many of these priestesses were temple prostitutes. These virgin oracles were basically enslaved to their temples and not allowed to leave or have any autonomy. Women in general had very few economic rights in many areas within the Roman empire, outside of Rome and Macedonia.
Do these sound like some of the familiar anti-woman arguments here on CF, stated under the guise of being scriptural? Many of the early church writers were heavily influenced by this philosophy and studied it to the same degree as scripture, and the church became more and more anti-woman and began to bar women from leadership roles as it became more and more structured.
"The male, unless constituted in some respect contrary to nature, is by nature more expert at leading than the female, and the elder and complete than the younger and incomplete." - Aristotle
"The relation of male to female is by nature a relation of superior to inferior and ruler to ruled." - Aristotle
"The slave is wholly lacking the deliberative element; the female has it but it lacks authority; the child has it but it is incomplete." - Aristotle
"Women and men have the same nature in respect to the guardianship of the state, save insofar as the one is weaker and the other is stronger." - Plato
"The relation of male to female is by nature a relation of superior to inferior and ruler to ruled." - Plato
"Wherefore women are more compassionate and more readily made to weep, more jealous and querulous, founder of the railing, and more contentious. The female also is more subject to depression of spirits and despair than the male. She is also more shameless and false, more readily deceived, and more mindful of injury, more watchful, more idle, and on the whole less excitable than the male. On the contrary, the male is more ready to help, and, as it has been said, braver than the female; and even in malaria, if the sepia is struck with a trident, the male comes to help the female, but the female makes her escape if the male is struck." - Plato
This is the philosophical lens many were looking through and was ingrained into them while interpreting scripture such as Paul's letters. It ignores cultural context and Paul's mission as well as his acclaim of his female co-workers in Christ who were leading and teaching. When you look at scripture through a Christian lens that assumes we are to love each other as Christ loves his church, we realize that we cannot interpret scripture assuming any sort of human domination over others, but that we are to all be servants of one another.
