Are you sure about that, or is it just something somebody told you? I'm pretty interested in classical history, and I do quite a bit of reading, and it seems to me that religious rites featuring (or even being led by) women were far from uncommon. The celebrated Elysian Mysteries, for example, were led by women but with equal numbers of men participating.

The Delphi Oracle cult was also often dominated by women.

In Egypt, an important part of the Greco-Roman classical world at the time, several religious traditions included important participation and even leadership by women.

Moving westward to Rome, we have the cult of Bona Dea, the Vestals, etc. Men dominated most of the public priestly and augur-ly (is that even a word in English?) rites, but far from all public religious rites.

Certainly, men tended to dominate religion, but I think you go too far when you say that equal participation of men and women in early Christian religious rites was revolutionary. I think a lot of evidence shows that that isn't the case.