Women in charge
The Lord thunders at the head of his army (Joel 2:11)
Gender is back on the agenda. A number of people have noticed that the most successful leaders in this crisis have largely been female, and the most disastrous and ridiculous have all been male. It is not completely binary as some male leaders have done well, but there is a fairly stark contrast nonetheless.
On the one hand, Bolsonaro of Brazil declares that his athleticism makes him immune and joins a protest against his own government, while Trump suggests injecting disinfectant or getting sunlight into the body might cure the disease. On the other, Taiwan’s president Tsai Ing-wen enacted measures in January that have kept deaths down to double figures and prevented the need for a lockdown, while Iceland's leader Katrin Jacobsdottir has offered free testing to everyone and the death toll has only reached 10. It seems that the male machismo so attractive to the masses does not deal well with valuing individual vulnerable human beings.
It is then more than a little ironic that it is likely to be women who are worst effected by the economic damage done by the virus. The kinds of jobs women do are most likely to be lost, the ability of women to work is most severely impacted by the absence of schools and childcare facilities, and when work starts again, women are least likely to get the new jobs as they appear.
In Joel, God comes across at this point very much in the guise of a masculine warrior, as he takes his army into battle. Also, though the regular 'he' and 'his' are not in the Hebrew, JHWH (the LORD) functions as a singular masculine noun. In today's world then not the kind of leader you want. Women do it best. Do we need then to revisit this masculine image of God?
I for one am not at all comfortable with attempts to de-gender God. Jesus calls God Father and that's good enough for me. Replacing 'he' with 'it' is hopeless and, though the Lord is described as like a mother, he also gets likened to a chicken so that hardly helps. I am very sympathetic with those for whom the word 'father' is far from safe so we have to be most careful not to assume people will be comforted by this word for God. But it is not an optional image, as it is chosen by Jesus himself. Somehow in the messiness of real life we have to rediscover the true fatherhood of God.
I wonder if many of our male leaders have adopted a kind of hyper masculinity that has nothing to do with being made male in the image of a father God. Our world has told itself that male means dominant, aggressive, hard when in God it means none of those things. I wonder if it means exactly the same things it means to be female: to be wise, and strong, and gentle, and loving. The very discussion of gender in leadership then becomes both demeaning to women and confusing as to the real questions of what makes a good leader and why are we choosing such poor ones. Gender is not the issue, competence is. More than that injustice for the half of the world that happen to be female is a greater cause of misery and oppression than even this crisis. Maybe we can put the kind of energy and focus we've had recently into solving that problem too.
Gender is back on the agenda. A number of people have noticed that the most successful leaders in this crisis have largely been female, and the most disastrous and ridiculous have all been male. It is not completely binary as some male leaders have done well, but there is a fairly stark contrast nonetheless.
On the one hand, Bolsonaro of Brazil declares that his athleticism makes him immune and joins a protest against his own government, while Trump suggests injecting disinfectant or getting sunlight into the body might cure the disease. On the other, Taiwan’s president Tsai Ing-wen enacted measures in January that have kept deaths down to double figures and prevented the need for a lockdown, while Iceland's leader Katrin Jacobsdottir has offered free testing to everyone and the death toll has only reached 10. It seems that the male machismo so attractive to the masses does not deal well with valuing individual vulnerable human beings.
It is then more than a little ironic that it is likely to be women who are worst effected by the economic damage done by the virus. The kinds of jobs women do are most likely to be lost, the ability of women to work is most severely impacted by the absence of schools and childcare facilities, and when work starts again, women are least likely to get the new jobs as they appear.
In Joel, God comes across at this point very much in the guise of a masculine warrior, as he takes his army into battle. Also, though the regular 'he' and 'his' are not in the Hebrew, JHWH (the LORD) functions as a singular masculine noun. In today's world then not the kind of leader you want. Women do it best. Do we need then to revisit this masculine image of God?
I for one am not at all comfortable with attempts to de-gender God. Jesus calls God Father and that's good enough for me. Replacing 'he' with 'it' is hopeless and, though the Lord is described as like a mother, he also gets likened to a chicken so that hardly helps. I am very sympathetic with those for whom the word 'father' is far from safe so we have to be most careful not to assume people will be comforted by this word for God. But it is not an optional image, as it is chosen by Jesus himself. Somehow in the messiness of real life we have to rediscover the true fatherhood of God.
I wonder if many of our male leaders have adopted a kind of hyper masculinity that has nothing to do with being made male in the image of a father God. Our world has told itself that male means dominant, aggressive, hard when in God it means none of those things. I wonder if it means exactly the same things it means to be female: to be wise, and strong, and gentle, and loving. The very discussion of gender in leadership then becomes both demeaning to women and confusing as to the real questions of what makes a good leader and why are we choosing such poor ones. Gender is not the issue, competence is. More than that injustice for the half of the world that happen to be female is a greater cause of misery and oppression than even this crisis. Maybe we can put the kind of energy and focus we've had recently into solving that problem too.
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