Equals

Enjoying Gender Equality In All Areas Of Life

Jenny Baker

• Publisher: SPCK Publishing
• Year: 2014
• ISBN:
  9780281070701
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Sexuality & Gender in Religion

"God intended men and women to live and work together in partnership and in harmony. It may not feel so at times, but we are truly equal! This exhilarating book explores what that means in real terms. In the UK - where only a fifth of MPs are female; where women are paid less than men and one in four will experience violence from their partner; where men comprise the vast majority of the prison population and boys are underperforming at school - the biblical vision of women and men being truly equal is needed more than ever. Equality, Jenny Baker suggests, is intrinsically related to the desire to see people flourish. Jesus was not averse to challenging cultural stereotypes in his encounters with others. His model of liberating relationships can be a great encouragement to us, as we seek to find the generosity of spirit we need to enable those we love to thrive and, ultimately, to reflect more fully the image of God.

1

Exploring equality

One hundred years ago, Emily Davison fought hard for women to have the right to vote. She was jailed and force-fed numerous times and eventually died from injuries gained when she stepped in front of King George V’s horse at the Epsom Derby with the hope of bringing more attention to the cause. Emily and her fellow campaigners saw winning the vote as a vital step for women in gaining equality with men. I wonder what kind of society they imagined as they looked into the future, and what they would think of the way we live now.

Because in spite of men and women having the same rights under the law, we still experience significant inequalities in different areas of life. Nearly a hundred years after Nancy Astor became the first female MP to take her seat in the House of Commons, barely more than one-fifth of our MPs are women.¹ A recent survey of contributors to serious public debate through newspapers, radio and TV found that, again, just over a fifth of them were women. Women are in the minority in business leadership as well, and the recession has hit women the hardest with more of them losing their jobs as a result of cuts. Women still earn less than men, over 40 years after the Equal Pay Act, with those working full time earning 85p for every £1 earned by a man.

And it’s not just women who are disadvantaged through inequality. Men are significantly more likely to die from cancer than women, and three-quarters of those who commit suicide are male. Men make up 95 per cent of the prison population. Girls are outperforming boys at every level of the education system, and more of them go on to higher education. There are considerably more women than men in the congregations of our churches, although the majority of church leaders are men.

Alongside these examples of inequity, many relationships between women and men are seriously damaged and damaging. Female MPs, presenters and campaigners are subjected to threats of rape and violence on social media. A 17-year-old girl who set up a feminist society at her school received an appalling and abusive backlash from the boys in her wider peer group, and her school’s response was to silence the girls rather than target the boys’ behaviour. Two women a week are killed at the hands of their partner, while men who suffer from domestic violence are much less likely to report it than women.

It seems that women and men are not doing life together very well.

These inequalities are damaging the quality of people’s lives, harming relationships between men and women, limiting the effectiveness of businesses and institutions and restricting the freedom our children have to reach their full potential.

And yet when I read the Bible, I see a completely different vision of how things could be. God created both men and women in his image and together gave them the task of exploring and developing the world he had made as equal partners. That harmony and co-operation was disrupted when people disobeyed God, and conflict and competition entered the scene. But God always had the intention of redeeming everything that was spoilt by sin, including the distorted dynamics between women and men. Jesus related to women in a radically different way from the culture around him, treating them with respect, welcoming them into his wider community of disciples, taking time to teach them and allowing them to bear witness to his resurrection. He modelled a profoundly different form of servant leadership that didn’t lord it over others or depend on hierarchy. The early Church wrestled with how to enable these restored relationships between men and women to flourish, and women took their place alongside men as leaders and teachers in the community. As followers of Jesus we are called to work out the redemption he offers in every area of life, allowing his spirit to transform our brokenness, demonstrating the wisdom of walking in God’s ways and modelling something profoundly different from the damaged relationships between men and women in the rest of the world.²

I’ve also seen the liberating impact of women and men who value equality and are proactive about dismantling the barriers that stand in its way – the churches that take time to nurture all the gifts that both men and women have to offer; the parents who make it a priority to share work and the care of children so that both can pursue their calling; the households where everyone does their fair share of the domestic work; the workplaces that root out sexism and aim to open up opportunities to everyone. Equality is not just a nice concept or an interesting idea, it’s foundational to women and men doing life together well. It’s the environment that enables true human flourishing, where people experience life in all its fullness and pass that on to others.

But it seems to me that equality is easily misunderstood and can be a slippery concept to grasp. For a start, are men and women really equal? We’re clearly different in lots of ways. We have different body parts, grow hair in different places and the difference in our chromosomes is reproduced in every cell of our bodies. In almost all sports, whether it’s running, cycling, swimming or jumping, men are consistently faster than women: they jump higher, lift heavier weights, throw further and score more. That pattern of men and women achieving differently is repeated in lots of different spheres of life. How can we say that women and men are equal?

And then, aren’t the differences between men and women a good thing? Wouldn’t it be dull if we were all exactly the same? Where’s the harm in men loving football and women preferring shopping? If women were really equal to men, wouldn’t there be as many of them leading businesses, taking part in government and writing opinion pieces by now? Maybe the fact that they’re still in the minority proves that actually they’re just not cut out for it?

Instead of going round in circles with these types of questions, we need to explore what equality is, and what it isn’t, what it means to say that women and men are equal and what stops that equality being experienced in every area of life.

What equality is . . .

Equality is the belief that all people have the same value, regardless of any other defining characteristics such as gender, ethnicity, sexuality, disability, and age. A society or community that values equality will work to eliminate discrimination, disadvantage and barriers to opportunities so that everyone can reach their full potential. Equality is about treating people fairly without prejudice or assumptions and it’s the essential foundation on which all fruitful relationships are built. Equality, particularly when we’re talking about women and men, is about being free to choose the direction your life takes and having the encouragement and opportunities to enact that choice, rather than being constrained by stereotypes or cultural convention. It’s about everyone being able to flourish.

I’ve found, in conversations about equality, that there are few people who would disagree that men and women are equal but there are lots who want to qualify that in some way. People are very quick to add a ‘but’ and to jump ahead to focus on difference, which is where their real interest lies. ‘Of course men and women are equal but they have different roles or functions . . .’ or ‘but their brains are wired differently’ or ‘but men are natural leaders’. We’ll look at difference in lots more detail later because you can’t discuss equality without exploring and understanding diversity and difference, but I want to pause here and spell out in more detail the ways in which women and men are equal.

Men and women are equally human

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We hold these truths to be self evident, that all men are created equal.

Thomas Jefferson, 1776

An equal society protects and promotes equal, real freedom and substantive opportunity to live in the ways people value and would choose, so that everyone can flourish. An equal society recognises different people’s different needs, situations and goals and removes the barriers that limit what people can do and can be.

Leeds City Council, 2012³

Equality is treating people fairly regardless of any differences between them.

Neil Thompson⁴

Equality is about creating a fairer society, where everyone can participate and has the opportunity to fulfil their potential.

Department of Health

Equality means being afforded the same rights, dignity and freedoms as other people. These include rights to access resources, the dignity of being seen as able and the freedom to choose what to make of your life on an equal footing with others.

Danny Dorling⁵

Your equality policy reflects your commitment to equal opportunities. It is your promise to treat all employees, and potential employees, fairly and considerately.

ACAS⁶

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Again, this seems a very obvious thing to say but early thinkers taught otherwise. Aristotle said that women were a lower form of life, and Ambrose, one of the original doctors of the Church, was convinced that because Eve was created from Adam’s body rather than his soul, women were not made in the image of God. Our understanding of the world and how it works has, of course, changed since then, but I wonder how persistent and influential this kind of thinking is and how much it has shaped current beliefs about men and women. As recently as 1993, in response to the discrimination that so many women face around the world, the UN World Conference on Human Rights found it necessary to confirm that women’s rights were human rights,⁷ that women are fully human. Clearly the fact that such an affirmation was required shows that the humanity of women is contested in many places, in the way they are treated if not in an articulated theory. In contrast, the creation story tells us that both women and men bear God’s image: ‘God created human beings in his own image, in the image of God he created them; male and female he created them.’⁸ Perhaps if we talked more about our common humanity and what we share as human beings made in the image of God, we would get less hung up about ways in which men and women might or ought to be distinctive.

Women and men are equal in value

In many cultures around the world, men are valued more highly than women; they are given better food, priority access to medical care and even a greater opportunity to live. Amartya Sen was the first person to use the term ‘missing women’ to describe the large number of women who are not alive due to discrimination and inequality. Studies of the ratio of men to women in different countries suggest that there are an estimated 100 million missing women worldwide, 50 million of them in India, where in some communities there are as few as 85 women to every 100 men.⁹ In the West, the undervaluing of women is demonstrated in the persistent pay gap between men and women. In spite of the Equal Pay Act being passed over 40 years ago, women in full-time work take home 85p for every £1 that a man takes home. In some sectors the disparity is even greater, with the pay gap rising to 33 per cent in the City of London and 55 per cent in the finance sector.¹⁰ Surely it goes without saying that what you’re paid and whether you live should not be based on what sex you are.

Men and women have equal rights

After the Second World War, the United Nations adopted the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in 1948, the first global expression of the rights to which all human beings are entitled. Countries around the world have ratified this or related declarations of rights and integrated them into their own legal systems as a recognition of the protected opportunities that people should have simply because they are human. It sounds a simple idea, but the outworking of it is often controversial as communities try to negotiate conflicting rights and accompanying responsibilities. In 2013, the Conservatives were talking about repealing the Human Rights Act largely in protest at the obligation it imposes to pay attention to the rights of certain immigrants and offenders. It’s easy to be blasé about rights when you’re in a place where you can take them for granted, but in all countries they are an important route to justice and equality. The UN Convention on the Elimination of all forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW), adopted in 1979, is a further attempt to affirm and secure the rights of women around the world.

Women and men are equally intelligent

The Victorians believed that women were intellectually inferior to men, a belief that excluded women from studying at university and voting in elections. The belief in essential differences between men and women was so strong at that time that since then, from the 1890s onwards, there has been sustained empirical research to discover what those differences were and where they came from.¹¹ Early studies showed that actually the mental capacities of men and women were more or less equal – a fact that has been consistently upheld in subsequent studies. Very quickly at the time and ever since, everyone accepted that men and women are as intelligent as each other. It’s easy to see how a belief that one group is more intellectually capable than another can become a self-fulfilling prophecy. If women are naturally less intelligent, then educating them is a waste of time; if they are not given access to education then they won’t reach their full intellectual potential and will be excluded from lots of areas of life. Now, girls consistently outperform boys at every level of education from SATs to university degrees, which is a cause of significant concern. No one would suggest that boys are less intelligent; instead, people look at methods of teaching, learning and testing to see if and how they...

Table of contents

• Cover page
• Praise for the book
• About the author
• Title page
• Imprint
• Dedication
• Table of contents
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction
• 1. Exploring equality
• 2. What are little girls and boys made of?
• 3. Exploring inequality
• 4. Addressing inequality: how can we do things differently?
• 5. Home life and equality
• 6. Marriage and equality
• 7. Parenting and equality
• 8. Work and equality
• 9. Church and equality
• Notes
• Bibliography