most were fishermen, none indicated they were keeping contemporaneous accounts, all were written well after the fact. the tale of christ's birth would have had to come direct from one of the 4 principals involved: mary, god, joseph or jesus. being just born, but both god and man, jesus probably had his version. mary's version conveniently explains her out-of-wedlock pregnancy, which joseph went along with. god did not respond to requests for his position on the issue, though many voice mail messages were left.

presumably, jesus would probably have said something to his disciples, about the facts of his conception and birth, and the cencus taking would have been common knowledge, explaining how they ended up in a barn, instead of inn (no room, they weren't poor). unless jesus told each one this story individually (possible, i suppose), and simply changed minor details, you'd think all of them would pretty much the same story, when committing it to papyrus. and yet, they don't.

however, in fairness, it was 300 years later, after all of these gospels had been translated, written and re-written who knows how many times, that they were finally incorporated into one doctrine. it's certainly possible that all started out exactly the same, and were just changed, ever so slightly, each time they were re-translated/written. and then there's the issue of the King James version, which mangled the gospels even more. absent locating the original written versions, and properly translating them, we'll probably never be certain.

politics and patriarchy form the basis of the doctrine, so women (except for mom) having little authority or major involvement, isn't at all surprising.