did women serve on the witan?

The idea that the Witan was some kind of formal institution to which people were elected is largely a Victorian creation designed to provide a teleological justification for British colonialism and cultural superiority under the guise of Britain being the 'home of Democracy', and one that really needs to die. "The Witan" really needs to be contextualised as "a Witan" - a council of nobles and worthies who could provide counsel and ratify decisions at any given moment. These can be most readily seen in the attestations of the many and various extant Anglo-Saxon charters; the local ealdormen, reeves, thegns, bishops, ministers and hundredmen who attended the king's itinerant court at any given site were his witan at that specific moment. Women do appear in these lists, but rarely, and the vast majority of these figures appear to have been male.

That doesn't mean that women couldn't hold executive power. Æthelflæd of Mercia ruled her kingdom independently for almost a decade before passing the crown (albeit briefly) to her daughter Ælfwyn in 918, however she does appear to have been the exception rather than the rule, and Ælfwyn was deposed by her uncle, Edward the Elder, King of Wessex, after a few months. Noble women do appear to have held some positions of authority, however this does appear to largely have occurred either after the death of a husband, or in leiu of a male heir.

Women did appear to have broadly-speaking equal rights to men when it came to owning land and property however. We have a number of surviving wills from Anglo-Saxon women such as this one from a Wynflæd, disposing of her land, livestock, clothing, jewellery, slaves and household goods, including property given to her granddaughters. Roughly a third of surviving Anglo-Saxon wills are from women, which suggests that a good number of women were both wealthy and also literate. Other legal protections, however, are less consistant: Æthelberht's Kentish laws on 597, for example, state that somebody who sleeps with another man's wife is responsible for procuring him another wife out of his own pocket. However, if a married woman is unhappy ans wishes to leave with the children, she is entitled to take half of the property.

By the reign of Ine of Wessex in the 700s, the law contains provisions for widowed mothers, and abjures a woman's guilt from the crimes if her husband unless she's an active participant. By the reign of Alfred of Wessex in the 870s, the law contains a number of penalties against several degrees of sexual assault, with compensation actually paid to the woman in question, which actually makes quite a difference.

One way in which Anglo-Saxon women could gain some degree of wealth and authority was, contrary to what might seem logical, to join the Church. Admittedly in this case, it did help to be born into a wealthy and powerful family to begin with. Convents could own extensive lands and be significant productive sites, particularly in the textile industry. From surviving charters, we know that the nuns of Minster-in-Thanet in Kent, for example, owned a number of ships used in cross-channel trade which were exempted from tolls at the port of London.