Christianity, the Bible, has been blamed for forming a society in which women are treated as inferiors. How false this allegation is! Bible is clear as clear could be that there is nothing inherently superior or inferior to male or female. Let us look into few aspects in the bible.
Both men and woman are created in the image of God. They share the same dignity. What makes both man and woman from the rest of the world?. Robert shaw mentions three aspects to the image of God: Spirituality; Sovereignty, and morality. All three applied equally to man and woman in their created dignity.
We share the same humanity. This shared humanity can be seen in the names of Adam and Eve in Hebrew language. In Hebrew “Ishah” (Woman) is just a feminised form of “ish” (Adam). So, Adam looks at Eve and says “This is now bone of my bones, and flesh of my flesh.”
Equality is seen in our mutual interdependency. Both men and women are dependent on each other for their existence itself. man was incomplete as it were without the woman. He needed the woman; he was not self-sufficient. (We have discussed this in the previous article).
The man and the woman jointly receive God’s mandate to multiply and fill the earth, and to subdue it, exercising dominion (Gen 1:26–28). So, God has created both of us in such a way that we must complement each other and work together to fulfil the mandate in its fulness.
We both equally need God because we both have fallen short of the glory of God and separated ourselves from the presence of God due by sinning against God almighty. So, we both can’t neither save ourselves nor each other rather we both need the Salvation he offered on the Cross. We both equally go through all the miserable consequences without any gender differentiations.
The Lord Jesus Christ Himself treated women as equals to men. He talked with women even to the result of shock among His disciples. In one instance, with the woman of Samaria at the well, they “marvelled that He talked with the woman” (John 4:27). In other situations, He defended women from male criticism. “Why trouble ye the woman? for she hath wrought a good work upon Me”, He said (Matt. 26:10).
So, bible is in no way speaks of any gender inequality or supports any inferior, superior understandings. Both Man and woman equal: equal in creation, equal in sin, equal in hell-deserving, equal in grace, equal in glory, equal in value, equal in importance, equal in significance.