Jacqueline Allene Means is an American Anglican priest. On January 1, 1977, she became the first woman to be regularly ordained a priest in the Episcopal Church in the United States of America. The Episcopal Church's General Convention had approved the ordination of women to the priesthood in September 1976, and this had come into force on New Year's Day 1977. Women had been ordained in 1974 and 1975 (the Philadelphia Eleven and the Washington Four), but as this was without the approval of the General Convention, their ordinations were declared irregular.