Women were priests in Gnostic sects but not in the early Church per se.  This is attested to by Irenaeus.  

Calls for tinkering with Holy Orders were man-made then (such was Gnosticism, an attempt to cut the Son from the Father and to contain the divine Logos in a cheap bottle made by Plotinus) and are man made now, an effort to make a Sacrament more conformant to external ideals.