My first encounter with gender inequality occurred in the sixth grade. A fellow student and I were running for class president. The class chose Lawrence and explained that it was because a president should be a man.

         That was long ago. Conditions haven’t changed too much, although we women now have the right to vote and to wear pants! Forbes reports in 2024 that women earn 16% less than men. Wonder what God thinks? Here is an essay about the topic:

         God would certainly support women’s rights. Our God, who is neither male nor female, created women in his own image and likeness. Therefore, they are God’s children who share in God’s divinity. According to Genesis, women are men’s partners and have equal dignity. God, however, apparently favors women!

         When God decided to come to earth as a human being, there were many options. God could have appeared as a grown man, a baby washed up on the shore, or the wealthy son of a king. Instead, the Son of God was conceived by a young village girl by the power of the Holy Spirit.

Supposedly as abolitionist Sojourner Truth gave a speech, a man claimed that women did not have as many rights as men because Christ wasn’t a woman. Truth rejoined, “Where did your Christ come from? From God and a woman! Man had nothing to do with him.” The Son of God’s flesh, blood, and DNA came from Mary alone.

         Also, during the Angel Gabriel’s visit, the Blessed Virgin Mary, was privileged to be the first to hear the good news that the Messiah was on his way.

Jesus’s Regard for Women

         Jesus ignored the mores that prevailed in first-century Israel regarding women. At that time women, along with children, were deemed the property of men. Women were illiterate and not obliged to pray or observe feasts as men did. In the Temple they were confined to the Court of Women. For a man to address a woman in public was unthinkable. Women could not testify in court or ordinarily inherit property. A man could easily divorce his wife for a crime as minor as a badly cooked meal. But the woman was not accorded the same recourse. An unmarried, pregnant woman would be stoned to death, but the man who impregnated her was granted impunity.

         The way Jesus treated women was unusual, in fact radical, for a Jewish man.

• He spoke to them in public (even a Samaritan woman of ill-repute),

• He taught them as disciples and included them in his inner circle.

• He freed one from demons and healed them, including the woman with an issue of blood who dared to touch his robe.

• He brought a twelve-year-old girl back to life.

• He told parables about women like the one who lost a coin, a God-figure.

• He counted Mary and Martha of Bethany among his best friends.

• He praised a widow who donated her last two coins in the Temple.

• He saved the life of an adulterous women about to be stoned.

• He defended the repentant woman who washed his feet with her tears.

• Jesus even let a desperate Canaanite woman change his mind, and he cured her Gentile daughter after all.

         After Jesus rose from the dead with new, glorious life, in John’s Gospel it was a woman, Mary Magdalene, who first learned of it. Jesus appeared to her and commissioned her to relay the good news of his resurrection to his brothers, earning her the title Apostle to the Apostles. Other Gospels report that two or more women were the first to encounter the risen Lord.

         Jesus showed women respect and love, and the women disciples reciprocated with love. They supported Jesus and the apostles financially and no doubt prepared their meals. Most notably women, including his mother, Mary, accompanied Jesus as he carried his cross to the hill of Calvary, while all but one of the male apostles fled for their lives. A woman, the Mother of God, is greater than all the apostles. She is their queen!

         Interestingly, as Pope Francis reminded us in 2024, Jesus’s “Church is herself a woman: a daughter, a bride, and a mother. And who better than women can reveal her face?”

•   Have you ever felt or observed the injustice of gender inequality?

Here is a short interview that I found interesting …