gender and society questions

• Should official Christian teaching resist current secular views of gender?

  • Christians have a responsibility to defend traditional biblical ideas about gender roles and family life - the Bible as the word of God should always be followed such as the idea of gender -- secular ideas are changing
  • traditional gender roles - feminists such as Daly --> perpetuating the idea that women are subordinate is wrong, but Christians would argue that this may be the case due to historical reasons
  • resistance to same - sex marriage -- shouldn't be equal to heterosexual marriage
  • BUT - to appeal to the future generations there should be a change in the system
• Have secular views of gender equality undermined Christian gender roles?

  • sexist stereotyping between girls and boys - women feel as though they can't speak out against
  • more men in the work force to have careers - women forced into mothing roles
  • baby changing - usually located near the women's toilets
  • undermines traditional Christian gender roles - many couples no longer accept that the man is the head of the household
  • mutual love
  • but ideas of contraception still traditional
• To what extent is motherhood liberating or restricting?

  • Pope Paul - ultimate opportunity for women to fulfil their potential in the creation of another human being
  • Simone de Beauboir - motherhood forces women to suspend their own interests + personality to take care of her children
  • Ann Oakley - women felt negative about being pushed into housework and that many were frustrated at the powerlessness they felt of having children young
  • motherhood can be seen as both liberating and restricting in a sense that it depends entirely on the situation.
• Is the idea of family entirely culturally determined? yes

  • in the social sciences - family is studied as a social institution - seen as a pattern within society to have a family unit
  • can be seen as culturally determined - industrialised society tends to live in a smaller family unit - nuclear family
  • socialisation shows us the cultural norms such as in the UK young adults find a home and it would be deemed that a 15year old would be too young to move out but a 40 your old at home is deemed unusual
• Is the idea of family entirely culturally determined? no

  • Christianity - reaches that family is shaped by God not community
  • God decides to make humanity in Genesis and how the family unit comes together
  • How there are different roles to different genders
  • if it is solely society then there is no normal family - changing ideas on cultural ideas towards homosexuality
  • gift and sacrament from God
• Questions for society