Are the Women Equal to Men?

Should there be gender equality?

1. How do you personally feel about this issue?

2. Why do you feel that way?

3. Do you think gender equality is possible?

4. Will being equal of men and women, beneficial to humanity?

5. What does YHWH say about this issue?

How Do You feel About The Issue of Gender Equality?

Our own feelings

Whenever this issue is brought up, how do you personally feel? Do you feel strongly about it? Are you favoring equality or strongly against it? Both men and women may take the pro and con position with this issue. So, you have to examine yourself, where do you stand when it comes to this question?

Why do you feel this way?

When you have considered your personal feeling, the next question is: Why do you feel that way? Is it because you have the assumption that if gender equality exist, your quality of life will greatly improve? Or do you look at it as a hindrance to some opportunities that you wanted to be available to you too? Or do you hold this view simply because you feel that it is a good cause to take a stand about?

It is very important that we can break the issue down as above, or our emotions may get in the way in arriving at the proper conclusion.

Finally after having deeply thought about this matter, do you think it is possible to do it? Will it ever happen? If and when it happens, will it be beneficial for everyone?

Let us consider for the moment what are the effects of gender equality to the real life situations where it is now acceptable to treat both genders "equally".

FAMILY LIFE

The traditional arrangement for families is the man works for the family's financial needs and other support, while the woman stays at home maintaining domestic responsibilities, like rearing the children, keeping the house in order and supporting her husband for his needs.

With gender equality proponent families, these roles can be reversed or both the man and the woman share the different responsibilities. If the roles are reversed, the man will be the one who stays at home, looking out for the children, doing the house works and everything else that a working woman will have no time to attend to by herself. While the woman works for the finance of the family. In the situation when both the man and the woman agree to do both of working and doing house chores, they eventually find themselves too tired or preoccupied with one and doing too little for the other. Both of which, result in many family irritation.

What are the problems when the roles are reversed?

a. Men who stays at home, do poorly in taking care of the children. Children raised this way usually show poorer health and hygiene, though there are rare instances where a man may be so good in this role that he performs equal if not better than his wife. But if we factor in the advantages of children having been breastfed by their mothers, we can immediately understand how a husband will utterly fail in doing this.

b. Men who stays at home are being socially judged as being irresponsible. Although a man maybe doing many house chores and takes good care of his family, not earning money for the family is usually regarded as a man of failure in his married life. A man seen as someone so weak that he cannot work for his family's provision. Although this prejudice may not be true since there might be valid reasons why the wife is the one working. Maybe because of the present opportunities in the job market, education or just out of being with dominant personality, that she wants to feel free to decide how she would spend her married life, in this case as a working or a career oriented woman.

c. Men who accept this role reversal are also forced to accept the consequence of letting their wives have the final say on family matters and financial decisions, since the woman is the one who is earning the money anyway. Making the man subject to his wife. This is another reason why a fellow man looks down on another man when his family has this reversal of role.

d. Men also does poorly compared to women when it comes to conversation with the children, compared to the woman who loves expressing and hearing "feelings", men usually keep those kinds of things private, and may even discourage their children in making such kinds of conversation, denying the children of their needed emotional growth.

e. On the other hand, the women being among many male workmates, become the target of sexual predators, suitors and sexists at the workplace, putting tremendous pressure on the women and sometimes put them in danger, both physically and morally. Many end up having an illicit affair that eventually breaks the family. This is especially true if the woman works far from home and only goes home after an extended period of time, like in the case of overseas workers.

All in all, a reversal of gender roles makes for a weak family.

AT THE WORKPLACE

a. Since the woman will be the one working when the roles are reverse, she will either be treated with contempt by her sexist male co-workers or be treated with special attention because of her being a female, both of which will not work well for her and her family.

b. Being more available and accessible to the males in the workplace, compared to other females that are not there, working women frequently become the victim of sexual harassment and subtle sexual advances.

c. Working women tend to grow more dominant and aggressive as a natural defense mechanism against what they experience at work, from both male and female co-workers, a behavior she brings home, creating more hindrance to the husband and wife relationship. This adds to the fact that her husband is already emotionally subject to her, being the family's bread winner.

d. A woman proponent of gender equality will also find that her job is being made more difficult by her superiors who may treat her lesser than the way she think of herself, forcing her to put in double effort; first, to prove her capacity and second, in actually doing the work, because she is also trying to win the approval of her superiors, which may open her up again to dangers of being taken advantage of, or being treated badly.

In view of the above, is it realistic to think that gender equality will be possible or advantageous? Or if it can be insisted by some individual women, is it really to their benefit?

Is it not obvious that whatever we do, man and woman cannot be equal, it always end up of making one in authority over the other.

If we will base our conclusion on the result to the family and to the society in general, family with reverse roles, tend to produce weaker and weaker members of the society, thereby slowly destroying it.

What Does God's Word Say About This?

If you are a God believing person, you may want to know God's view in this matter.

What does His word show? Does God wants gender equality?

Let us see how God created the man:

27 So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them.... 7 the LORD God formed the man from the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living being....20 So the man gave names to all the livestock, the birds of the air and all the beasts of the field. But for Adam no suitable helper was found. 21 So the LORD God caused the man to fall into a deep sleep; and while he was sleeping, he took one of the man's ribs and closed up the place with flesh. 22 Then the LORD God made a woman from the rib he had taken out of the man, and he brought her to the man.- Genesis 1:27, 2:7, 20-22

It is therefore obvious that, right from the time of the creation, man and woman are made different. Why? The answer is simple; taken together, man and woman will reflect the image of God. Woman is a complement of man. Neither is complete to reflect God's full image without the other.

Man was directly made by God and later, woman was created from man. This manner of creation is meant to instill the dependency of the woman to the man, which came into existence through the prior existence of man. While man without the woman is incomplete.

It teaches us that man and woman are not created to be equal or the same, but instead they are created to complete each other's traits.

Now that it is clear to us how God created man and woman as not equal, which means one of them is to be above the other, who is placed by God to be the higher creation?

16 To the woman he said, "I will greatly increase your pains in childbearing; with pain you will give birth to children. Your desire will be for your husband, and he will rule over you." - Genesis 3:16

Clearly God designed man and woman, with the husband ruling over his wife.

And that, my friend, is how we are suppose to treat each other as man and woman.

We can choose to do things differently, but it will be against God's design and therefore would result in more problems and hardship for us, as we have shown before.

In conclusion, any human effort geared towards "empowering women" that is meant to put women in equal status with men is bound for hardship, simply because we are not made that way. Neither women being the leaders of men. Which is a direct opposite of what God has said himself in Genesis 3:16.

Does this mean that women are less important? Not at all, it is like saying that the key of a padlock is not important just because it is not a padlock, for what will a padlock be worth if there is no key to open it??

That is the reason why instead of trying to be equal or greater than men, women should enjoy their uniqueness, their natural trait and characteristics, their proper place in the Divine order of things. This way, humanity will be operating in the way God has designed our lives to be.