Many of the previous comments reveal a serious lack of knowledge of the history of religious orders for women and how they evolved from orders of monks even before the time of Christ, the monastic orders such as Benedictines, orders formed by saints like St. Vincent de Paul to work among the poor and who dressed like the peasants of the day,and the changes called for by Pius XII and Vatican II. All this led to most of the changes we see today. For an excellent essay covering this history and the theology, especially biblical, upon which it is based, may I refer you to the following URL.
http://ncronline.org/news/discerning-ministerial-religious-life-today
It will help to make intelligent assessments rather than uninformed judgments.

An investigation is not a punishment; it is meant to assist. It is impossible to deny that women religious are in a crisis. The numbers of nuns are dropping steadily in the United States. Why, then, it is so surprising that the Vatican is sending them assistance? I work at a Catholic school, that is currently going through its reaccreditation process. In the course of this process, the directors of the school have done an "investigation" of their own: sending out surveys, getting feedback, and enlisting outside assistance to help strengthen the areas that the school could improve. No one saw this as unfair; it is just and healthy for the hierarchy of an institution to examine different branches occasionally. Furthermore, it can be very helpful to strengthen and improve areas of weakness.
The fact that a normal procedure has raised such outcry amongst nuns is suspicious. Why are they not eager to have help in remedying a problem--dwindling nuns and sisters--that is affecting the entire Church? Is this not the essence of pride and injustice?
As for claims that this investigation is sexist, I would like to remind everyone that the Vatican undertook a formal investigation of all seminaries in the United States a few years ago. The men were checked out first. Why are sisters pretending that they are being singled out? The Vatican even put a sister in charge of this investigation. These are not the actions of an anti-woman organization.

This is a bogus investigation of the ONLY area within the church that is responsive to social needs.
The heirarchy is still ignoring the absolute hypocrisy of the institution.
Approximately 1/2 of the priests are homosexual.
And 1/2 of them are sexually active AND half of the heteroralsexual priests are also sexually active. This is from the church's own records.
There still is no real transparency to the abuse crisis and diocese after diocese is dragged through court and billions are spent of the laity money since ALL money is from the laity.
Watch what happens in the Bridgeport diocese as 14000 pages of previously secret personnel files are made public and we find out what "they" knew and what they did.

I think most suspicion comes out of fear and fear comes from past experience. In the past, women have experienced repression and subjugation so much when attention is focused on us, that we fear that as a common result.

I think it's good to be alert, but also cooperative, and to live in hope that this "inventory" may lead to positive change -- at the very least open more dialog that can be built upon. I'm not naieve enough to think it's the answer to the frustrations of our search for equality, but any step forward is at least not a step backward.

Until we know differently, I'd like to assign at least ambivilent motives, but at the most positive, prayerful and forward-thinking theological motives to this effort.

I wish the Vatican had put this much assessment effort into the Church sex abuse scandal