When studying women in relation to religion, it is strongly held there was a change from the women during Jesus life. He changed the covenant with God. He changed it for men and women.
Mary Magdalene is the second most revered woman in the Bible. The first being Mary the Virgin, mother of Jesus.
Mary Magdalene tops the list of women when there is a passage about women. In the New Testament. She sort of epitomizes/perfects the 'new woman' under a new covenant. The role model if you will.
This puts it into context.
...How the past is remembered, (click here) how sexual desire is domesticated, how men and women negotiate their separate impulses; how power inevitably seeks sanctification, how tradition becomes authoritative, how revolutions are co-opted; how fallibility is reckoned with, and how sweet devotion can be made to serve violent domination—all these cultural questions helped shape the story of the woman who befriended Jesus of Nazareth....
Mary Magdalene provides impetus to other women to cast off their old selves and find a new way of walking and talking to better align with the new faith.
Mary Magdalene is a consort to Jesus. He allows her frailties to be on exhibition to allow the growth of her own devotion. She is one of the women present when he is crucified and at his resurrection.
There is little discussion of her background. She is just there. She reforms her self, but, it was easy to do. She was provided for while among the company of Jesus. The women of the time were chattel. They were dependent on husbands and sons. If they were alone or cast out of a house they found work being prostitutes. Prostitutes were not necessarily scorned. They did not have the social status of a wife, but, they weren't really an outcast.
In that light Mary Magdalene was that transformer of women.
And yes there are academic studies of women within the practice of faith and their status and what they meant in that belief.
