Is religion responsible for the inferiority of women

Authors Avatar

Is religion responsible for the inferiority of women?

Withinn the old testament and the book of genesis it is said that God created the woman as a "helper" for the man: The LORD God said, "It is not good for the man to be alone. I will make a helper suitable for him." (NIV, Genesis 2:18)        However, being a "helper" does not imply that the woman was inferior or subservient to the man; the same Hebrew word, `ezer, translated as "helper," is used to describe God, Himself, in Psalms 33:20, 70:5, 115:9-11. In fact, God created both men and women in His own image and made them equal custodians of all His creation:

So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them. God blessed them and said to them, "Be fruitful and increase in number; fill the earth and subdue it. Rule over the fish of the sea and the birds of the air and over every living creature that moves on the ground." (NRSV, Genesis 2:27-28)

When God created man, he made him in the likeness of God. He created them male and female and blessed them. And when they were created, he called them "man." (NIV, Genesis 5:1-2)

But the man and woman, Adam and Eve, disobeyed God in the Garden of Eden. God gave each of them punishments before evicting them from the Garden:

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." To Adam he said, "Because you listened to your wife and ate from the tree about which I commanded you, 'You must not eat of it,' "Cursed is the ground because of you; through painful toil you will eat of it all the days of your life. It will produce thorns and thistles for you, and you will eat the plants of the field. By the sweat of your brow you will eat your food until you return to the ground, since from it you were taken; for dust you are and to dust you will return." (NIV, Genesis 3:16-19)

Join now!

It is not clear in what sense the husband was to rule over his wife, and this been the subject of much debate. Regardless of how Eve's punishment was originally intended, this passage is key to understanding later Biblical teachings about women. The punishments on both Adam and Eve were clearly imposed by God Himself; God did not reduce women to inferior status, nor did He command men to rule harshly over their wives. However, in the course of history, it has sometimes been thought that God's punishment of Eve was justification for degradation and subjugation of women.

By ...

This is a preview of the whole essay