men and women and gender roles

There seems to be a bit of pathetic misunderstanding about the issue of men and women being equal. They brought up how men and women get different wages. In one way, I agree that it isn't completely fair- if a man and a woman are able to both do the work equally as well, then they should be paid equally. However, many times, while a woman "can" do a job, it does not mean that they are the best at doing it, or the fastest, or that they don't need more help. For example, a girl in my IDIS class was talking about how she had been being paid less for her landscaping job, than a guy who had just started. She commented as having said to them " I never tell you no when you ask me to do something, do I? I may need a skidsteer to move the big boulder, and the guy might not, but I still move it, don't I?" This is a prime example of what I mean. You really can't do that. If a woman has to use expensive equipment to do something that a man can do without, then she is not as capeable. This means that it is right for her to be paid less, because it costs more to have her work (every hour of time on a skidsteer takes away value from it; this means that it is worth less for resale or for collateral.) compared to the man. There is also the issue of liability. A woman's bones are thinner, and over all, they are more fragile. The woman will be more likely to get injured on the job as a man.

Women are just made differently than men. We are as the Bible says, "the weaker vessel". This is not weaker, as in cheaper, but rather, weaker, as gold is weaker than stainless steel. The steel is what you make the safebox out of, and the gold is what you protect inside. Just because the gold is not protecting the steel, does not mean that it is being devalued; rather, it is being valued, and cared for. The gold has a different purpose than the stainless steel, and nobody argues with that. Why do we argue about the roles of men and women? Christianity does not say that women are of less worth, but that they are to submit to men. This is not because they are inferior, but because they are under authority. Nobody argues if a man is told to submit to another man, who is in authority of him. Why then do we argue with the fact that the man of a household is in authority of the woman. This does not mean that the woman is a slave, or less important, but that she does not have to bother herself with making all the important decisions herself. I believe that most feminists are very lonely, miserable creatures. Not having a man around to take charge and relieve her of making all the difficult choices herself, not having a man to protect her, and not having a man to encourage, strengthen and support her. Feminists who are married most likely do not have good family lives; they are full of strife, because a feminist will refuse to submit to her husband; therefore, she either remains unmarried, marries and divorces a lot, marries a wimp or coward, or marries an average man, and fights with him constantly.

Feminism is a natural tendency in essence- it all goes back to the garden of Eden, when God pronounced upon Eve, that she would be striving with her husband, and seek to rule over him. We are never going to get away from that. Feminists spit upon the Bible because it's "chauvinistic" and says little of women. However, it actually says a lot. It has examples of Godly women, and evil ones; of women who made good choices, and those who did not. It shows women in leadership positions, (Deborah led the nation of Israel, in conjunction with Barak) management positions (the proverbs 31 woman) as well as women being a whole host of other things- queen Esther, for example. She was a minority- and in fact, a minority that was being persecuted for who they were. But yet, she herself was chosen to be queen, and thus was able to excercise her position to save her people from being massacred.

The Bible actually shows a lot of how we should treat minorities, and how even in Bible times, there was wrong treatment of them. For another example, there are the Samaritans. The Samaritans were scorned by the Jews, because they did not believe the same as the Jews did about worship, and they were viewed as "half-breeds". Some of these people were immoral and ungodly, but others, like the famed "Good Samaritan", cared about others, and actually stepped out of the boundaries of the stereotypical samaritan behavior, and rescued a Jew from a slow death after being beaten and robbed.