Gender Incongruent Field

            On my flight from Beijing to Kunming this summer, I picked up a copy of “China Daily” (Aug. 20, 2011) and was surprised to find all kinds of news about women. 

• ·         In entertainment news, the large picture of a famous singer and the story about her imminent come back tour was prominently displayed. 

• ·         In national news, a young woman (24 years old) was criticized for her lack of qualification to run the 1.5 billion yuan international project (Project Hope). 

• ·         In the Sport section, the young female golfer Yani (22 years old, ranking number 1 in the world) made news visiting the Youth Golf Invitational.  Another large picture and story about the Chinese National Woman Soccer team winning the semifinal over Brazil donned the next page. 

• ·         In the World News section, China Daily reported the teenager female daredevil Maya (19 years old) wowed the crowds in Japan.  She is the first female ever joined and won the auto race (in 44 years).  

            I thought to myself, no wonder Chinese from Mainland China kept telling me that “woman is half of the sky”.  Then my eyes fell on another big title: Women winemakers still battle glass ceiling.  As I looked down to the fine print of the story, the first sentence said: New York (of all places)---although it has been nearly 50 years since the first woman graduated with a wine degree from a top US university, less than 10% of women are chief winemakers at US wineries.   Then it went on to say “Mary Ann Graf became the first woman to graduate from the viticulture and oenology department at the University of California Davis in 1965 and since the mid-1990s women have made up nearly half of the students in that specialty at the university. “  However, according to research, less than 10 % of the top winemaker jobs at 3200+ wineries in California are women. 

             The research agreed that women certainly have more opportunities to gain knowledge needed to become a winemaker than the past, but “attitude changes take time”.  It is interesting that the research concluded with “it is always more difficult for women to move into gender incongruent field”.  I wonder what it meant by “gender incongruent field”?

            I also wonder if our churches are “gender incongruent field”?  30% (up to 50%) of all students in seminaries all over the US are now women (a Chinese seminary also reported to have close to 50% women in attendance) and it certainly did not translate into open doors for Christian women called and gifted by God to serve in the church [1].  And according to some researchers, women are dropping out of seminary or ministry with high numbers [2].

            As I sat in my seat and pondering over this, another question popped into my mind: who created the “gender incongruent field”?  Did God create it? 

            Gen. 1: 26-31 says:  ²⁶ Then Go: 26-31d said, “Let us make mankind in our image, in our likeness, so that they may rule over the fish in the sea and the birds in the sky, over the livestock and all the wild animals, and over all the creatures that move along the ground.”  ²⁷ So God created mankind in his own image, in the image of God he created them; male and female he created them.  ²⁸ God blessed them and said to them, “Be fruitful and increase in number; fill the earth and subdue it. Rule over the fish in the sea and the birds in the sky and over every living creature that moves on the ground.”  ²⁹ ….. God saw all that he had made, and it was very good. And there was evening, and there was morning—the sixth day.  

God certainly did not create the “gender incongruent field” here.

             Of course, none of us can stay in Gen. 1, the rest of the human history (and His-story) unfolded as we go into Gen 2 and on. 

However, none of us should forget Gen. 1, either.  

Gen. 1is God’s intention, desire and will for us (men and women) played out in real time, in real term, and in real life.   

Gal. 3: 26-29 beckons all of us to go back: 

²⁶ So in Christ Jesus you are all children of God through faith, ²⁷ for all of you who were baptized into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ. ²⁸ There is neither Jew nor Gentile, neither slave nor free, nor is there male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus. ²⁹ If you belong to Christ, then you are Abraham’s seed, and heirs according to the promise.

In Christ, therefore, there is no “gender incongruent field".………not in the church that is the body of Christ; not in church ministry where who we are in Christ and our calling and gifting should matter; and not in serving God and God’s people for God Himself called both men and women into the service (and at least half of God’s people are women)!

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[1] Clergy Women: An Uphill Calling, by Barbara Brown Zikmund, Adair Lummis, and Patricia Mei Yin Chang, Westminster John Knox Press, 1998 and God’s Potters: Pastoral Leadership and the Shaping of Congregations, Jackson Carroll, W.B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., 2006.

[2] Facing the Stained Glass Ceiling: Gender in a Protestant Seminary by Barbara Finlay, University Press of America, 2003, and Pastors in Transition: Why Clergy Leave Local Ministry by Dean Hoge and Jacqueline Wegner, W.B. Eerdmans, 2005.