She wraps herself in strength, might, and power in all her works.
-Proverbs 31:17, TPT
Yesterday, I came across some fascinating research findings about our society. It comes from the Pew Research Center.
The article is “Strong Men, Caring Women: How Americans describe what society values (and doesn’t) in each gender” by Kristi Walker, Kristen Bialik, and Patrick van Kessel.
What struck me about this article is how churches often “go with the flow” as it comes to this secular gender role valuation.
The two words mentioned almost exclusively for each respective gender bear out this observation. The authors write,
Beautiful was almost always used for women. Provider was only used for men (emphasis mine).
How many of us have heard sermons or read pastoral articles about how women need to attend to their physical appearances?
How many of us have heard sermons or read pastoral articles reducing the man’s role to being a good provider for his family?
These are society’s gender roles. They are not necessarily biblical. But the easy thing is simply to uncritically accept them as such. That comes with a nasty cost, though, as many faithful spouse has discovered…
When you find yourself rejected by a cheater over not living up to their interpretation of said gender roles, the rejection has the added sting of both society and the church devaluing you.
I quoted from Proverbs 31 to make the point that the gender role valuations are skewed. Strength is considered a positive trait in the Bible for a woman. The research has it as less so.
Yet I say this NOT to say being beautiful or being a good provider are wrong.
The point of this is to warn us not to assume society evaluates men and women the way God does.
We need to be careful not to reduce a woman’s value to how she measures up to our standards of beauty.
Similarly, we need to be careful not to reduce a man’s value to how much wealth or income he has.
