Changing the World: The Task of Feminist Biblical Scholars

Abstract

Patriarchal society expects mothers to be home with their children. Many of our male colleagues are able to attend conferences and meetings and to conduct overseas research with their minds at rest because wives or female partners are taking care of their children. But what do male superiors and colleagues expect of their female colleagues when they cannot travel or attend meetings because their own husbands are away or they are single parents? Besides traveling, the ability to spend time researching and writing is also greatly reduced for a wife and mother in comparison with her male colleagues. Her children—healthy or sick, able bodied or disabled—expect her to provide moral and emotional support. What have institutions done to encourage wives and mothers to stay in academia? I wish there were an agency or association for feminist theological scholars that could speak for our rights so we could contribute to feminist scholarship in the same ways as our male colleagues are able to do in their fields. But such support is scarce, although it will be necessary if we are to break through in establishing feminist courses in the curricula of our theological institutions. Indeed, if theological institutions do not educate their students adequately for the challenges of the real world, why exist? And if theological institutions do not support and provide avenues and opportunities to encourage sisters, wives, and mothers, especially those who have taken secondary roles because of the inevitable demands of patriarchal society, to excel in their studies and research, how can we then truly promote feminist voices in churches for the future?