Christianity & Gender Equality

Today, women, just like men, are playing an equally significant role in various spheres of life. Nevertheless, it is only a few of them, the rest are shunned by the society regardless of their capabilities and potential.

Religion is an inseparable part of every society, in fact, it is the backbone of every society, and christianity remains the largest religion in the World, hence, the curiosity on where it stands with the issue of gender equality.

The Holy Bible seems to paint a patriarchal society portrait as the ideal image by instructing wives to submit themselves to their husbands as they do to the Lord because the husband is the head of the wife as Christ is the head of the Church (Ephesians 5:22-33 & Colossians 3:18-19 | NIV). The Oxford dictionary defines submitting as accepting or yielding to a superior force or to the authority or will of another person.

In the Biblical era, census did not even include women and children. When Jesus fed five thousand people with five loaves of bread and two fish, women and children were not counted (Matthew 14:21 | NIV). The number of the Israelites who fled from Egypt with Moses was recorded to be “about six hundred thousand men on foot, besides women and children” (Exodus 12:37 | NIV).

However, the value of women and children has never been undermined in the Holy Bible. The book was written in an era of warfare when every nation was marked from an ancient military perspective, being the size of its army. Therefore, women and children were probably not part of census mostly because they did not fight on the actual battlefield. However, women supported the soldiers from behind the scenes and children are always the future of any nation.

Further, Jesus defied patriarchy as he spoke to women in public, had close female friends, and put the children at the core of his message.

More so, the nation of Israel was once led by a female, Prophetess Debora, the fourth Judge of pre-monarchic Israel.

Prophetess Miriam, a sister to Moses was an important member of the team that led the Israelites from bondage to the promised land full of honey and milk.

Hence, one may agree that the Holy Bible has not undermined women but has equally recognized their significance in our society.

God fearfully and wonderfully made both women and men from “his own image” (Genesis 1:27 | NIV). We are further informed that “a woman is not independent of man, nor is a man independent of a woman for as a woman came from a man, so also, a man is born of a woman, but everything comes from God” (1 Corinthians 11:11 NIV).

So, if both women and men were made from the image of the same God and from each other, neither of the two is better than the other.

One thing that is clear from the Holy Bible is that women and men are different in their own special way, and God did this for a good reason; otherwise, he would have just created either Adam or Eve, not both.

As stated above and to amplify the same point, the two genders received two different instructions; wives to submit to their husbands, and husbands to love their wives as their own bodies.

Today, most gender related problems stem from the fact that most men have forgotten their own instruction, to love their wives as they love themselves.

In a society where men truly love their wives, there would be no need to emancipate women because initially women would have been receiving equal social, economical, political and religious opportunities, most importantly not undermined.

We all know that love is not proud or self-seeking, hence, men with true love will fairly and equally consider women in everything, as they would for themselves.

The Holy Bible might have not explicitly advocated for gender equality but it stands firm and strong for something even greater, love. If we teach men to love, gender equality will soon become a non-issue.