After Eden: Facing the Challenge of Gender Reconciliation

by Mary Stewart Van Leeuwen (Editor), Helen M. Sterk (Editor), Annelies Knoppers (Editor)

Overview

Written by an interdisciplinary team of scholars, this substantial volume offers a wide-ranging examination, from a Christian perspective, of the many complexities surrounding gender relations, showing how they have changed and how they still need to change if we are to be the men and women God meant us to be. No other book treats the systemic embedding of gender issues in all areas of life.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780802806468
Publisher:	Eerdmans, William B. Publishing Company
Publication date:	04/19/1993
Pages:	672
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 1.48(d)

Table of Contents

	Preface	xiv
1.	Living between the Times: Bad News and Good News about Gender Relations	1
	Good News and Bad in the Biblical Drama	2
	Good News and Bad in Contemporary Gender Relations	4
	Gender Relations and the Biblical Drama	6
	Creation, Fall, and Gender Relations	7
	The Redeemer and Gender Reconciliation	8
	Gender Relations in the Early Church	10
	The Continuing Call to Mutuality	11
	Looking Ahead	13
	Lights at the End of the Tunnel	14
Part I	Historical and Cross-Cultural Perspectives on Gender Relations
2.	Feminism and Christian Vision: Lessons from the Past	19
	How We Define Feminism	21
	Some Further Theological Reflections	25
	Roots of Contemporary Feminism -- The "First Wave"	28
	Liberal Thought	29
	Evangelical Reform: A Relational Expression of Feminism	31
	The Socialist Vision	37
	Toward a Dynamic Concept of Gender Relations	40
3.	Western Feminism since the 1960s: Lessons from the Present	44
	Liberal Feminism Revisited	45
	Marxist Feminism: A Class-Based Analysis	49
	Women as Producers and Reprodurers	50
	The Family under Capitalism	51
	Housework: Socialized or Home-Waged?	52
	The "Comparable Worth" Campaign	54
	Radical Feminism: A Form of Contemporary Relational Feminism	55
	The Radical Feminist Retrieval of Mothering	57
	The Radical Feminist Rejection of Femininity and the Retrieval of Sexuality	59
	Some Theological Observations	62
	Recent Developments: Socialist and Postmodern Feminism	63
	Postmodern Feminism: The Challenge of Deconstructionism	65
	What Price Pluralism? Problems and New Possibilities	67
4.	A Cross-Cultural Critique of Western Feminism	70
	Challenges to White Western Feminism	71
	Autonomy, Development, and Class	72
	Social Solidarity: Within the Family, with Women, and with Men	79
	Emancipation from Tradition	89
	The Decentering of Feminism	94
	The Advantage: A New Humility	95
	The Disadvantage: Loss of Moral Grounding for the Feminist Project	98
	A Christian Perspective on Difference	100
	Toward a Christian Feminist Vision That Embraces Women and Men	105
	Conclusion	112
Part II	Theological and Rhetorical Perspectives on Gender Relations
5.	Reformed Christianity and Feminism: Collision or Correlation?	117
	Definitions and Restrictions of Scope	119
	Basic Approaches to Christian Life and Thought	123
	The Affirmation of World-Formative Christianity	123
	The Importance of Experience for Christian Life and Thought	126
	The Importance of Interpreting and Using Scripture according to Theological/Ethical Norms	131
	Conclusion	145
6.	God, Humanity, and the World in Reformed and Feminist Perspectives	147
	God	147
	The Feminist Critique of Traditional God-Language	149
	Imaging God: Feminist Alternatives	153
	God-Language: A Reformed Response	156
	Humanity and the World	164
	The Critique of Dualism and the Affirmation of Wholism	165
	The Fallenness of Humanity and the World	169
	Equality and Inequality of Women and Men	177
	Conclusion	182
7.	Gender Relations and Narrative in a Reformed Church Setting	184
	The Importance of Narrative for Gender Relations	185
	The Creation Story as a Fundamental and Rhetorical Narrative	188
	How Narrative Shapes Religious Experience	191
	A Story of Gender Relations	199
	An Alternative Story of Creational Norms for Gender Relations	209
	Evaluation of the Creation Stories	215
	Conclusion	220
Part III	The Cultural Construction of Gender Relations
8.	A Critical Theory of Gender Relations	225
	Sex-Role Theory: An Overview	226
	Popular Definitions of "Masculinity" and "Femininity"	226
	A Critique of These Definitions	227
	Critical Theory as an Alternative to Sex-Role Theory: An Overview	233
	Description	233
	How Hegemony Works	235
	Human Agency and Structural Constraints	237
	How Sets of Social Relations Are Connected	239
	Critical Theory and Gender Relations	240
	Heterogeneity	241
	Domination/Subordination	241
	Human Agency	248
	Application of Critical Theory: "Masculinity" and "Femininity" Revisited	249
	Hegemonic Masculinity	249
	Privileged Femininity	254
	Application of Theory: Continuing the Game of Rope Tug	257
	Challenging the Game	257
	Reactions to Challenges	258
9.	Using the Body to Endorse Meanings about Gender	268
	Constructing the Female Body: Thin Is In	269
	Being Thin Is No Sin	269
	Pathogenic Weight Control Behaviors	271
	A Historical Perspective	273
	Layers of Meaning of Slimness	276
	Challenging the Norm: Body Politics	282
	Constructing the Male Body: Big, Strong, and Aggressive	285
	The "Ideal" Male Body	285
	A Historical Perspective	287
	"Naturalizing" Superiority	290
	Using Sport to Endorse Hegemonic Masculinity	293
	At the Individual Level	293
	At the Societal Level	295
10.	Whatever Happened to the Fig Leaf? Gender Relations and Dress	299
	Defining the Fashion System	301
	Fashion Trends in Western Culture: A Brief History	305
	Pre-fashion	305
	The Emergence of Fashion	306
	The Democratization of Fashion	313
	Twentieth-Century Fashion	327
	The Tyranny of Physical Perfection	332
	The Complicity of the Church	337
	Points of Resistance to the Tyranny of Fashion	338
	Fashioning the Future	339
11.	How Shall We Speak? Language and Gender Relations	340
	Action through Language	342
	How Naming and Defining Shape Gender Relations	345
	Defining "Human Being"	345
	Defining "Woman" and "Man"	348
	Reclaiming Humanity for Women	351
	How the Silencing of Female Experience Shapes Gender Relations	357
	Direct Silencing of Women's Voices	357
	Indirect Silencing of Women's Voices	362
	Speaking with Respect	384
Part IV	Social Institutions and Gender Relations
12.	Private versus Public Life: A Case for Degendering	389
	Late Twentieth-Century Feminism and the Public/Private Dichotomy	391
	New Voices in the Debate: Psychoanalytic and Philosophical Feminism	395
	Psychoanalytic Feminism: A Challenge to Freud	395
	Epistemology and Ethics: Concerns of Philosophical Feminism	399
	Feminist Theological Critiques of the Public/Private Split	407
	Creation, Sin, and the Feminization of Agapic Love	409
	The Call to Mutuality in All Spheres of Life	412
	Conclusion	414
13.	Family Justice and Societal Nurturance: Reintegrating Public and Private Domains	416
	Giving Women the Privacy They Need	417
	Justice in Philosophical and Biblical Perspectives	421
	Distributive Justice and Gender Relations	423
	Justice in Biblical Perspective	425
	Applying Biblical Justice to Family and Gender Relations	426
	Restoring Justice in the Family	429
	Justice as a Necessary Condition of Care	430
	Making the Public Realm a Sphere of Nurturance	437
	The Warrior versus the Nurturer	437
	The Limits and Potential of Maternal Thinking	439
	Attaining Concrete Justice for the Family	444
	Bringing Nurturance into the Public Sphere	446
	Toward a New Architecture of Gender	447
	Conclusion	451
14.	Case Studies from India and Egypt in Class, Gender, and Surviva	452
	The Divergent Lives of Men and Women	456
	In Narsapur	456
	In Cairo	461
	The "Domestication" of Women	465
	Individuality and Cooperation in the Family	467
	The Ideology of the "Housewife"	471
	Privileged Women and the Ideology of the Housewife	473
	Lower-Class Women and the Ideology of the Housewife	483
	Life Strategies	489
	American Women and Gender Strategies	489
	Women in Egyptian Factories	491
	Mahila Mandel of Bombay	493
	The Veiled Women of Cairo	494
	Some Christian Observations	497
15.	Is Someone in the Kitchen with Dinah? Gender and Domestic Work	503
	Domestic Work in Historical Perspective	505
	The Nature of Contemporary Domestic Work	514
	Men and Domestic Work	519
	Common Perceptions about men and Domestic Work	520
	Men's Agency and Domestic Work	523
	Women and Domestic Work	524
	Domestic Work from the Viewpoint of Critical Theory	528
	Possibilities for Change	529
16.	Pink, White, and Blue Collars: Gender and Waged Work	534
	Individually Oriented Explanations: Sex-Role Socialization Theory and Human Capital Theory	537
	A Critique of These Theories	538
	Structural Approaches	542
	The Marxist Theory	542
	The Organizational Approach	543
	The Approach of Critical Theory: The Pervasiveness of Gender	547
	Gendered Structure	548
	Gendered Fobs	550
	Gendered Activities	550
	The Gendered Workplace	553
	Human Agency: Challenging, Resisting, Coping, and Reconstructing	563
	Possibilities for Change	567
	Conclusion
17.	Still Living between the Times: Realism and Hope about Gender Relations	577
	"I'm Not a Feminist, But .."	578
	Liberal Feminism Revisited	581
	Christians as "Closet Liberal Feminists"	581
	Attractions and Hazards of Contemporary Liberal Feminism	584
	Relational Feminism Revisited	586
	European Feminism: A Better Brand?	588
	The Limitations of European Relational Feminism	590
	A Third Way?	594
	Socialist Feminism Revisited	594
	Beyond Critical Theory to Biblical Shalom	597
	Final Thoughts	600
	Bibliography	601
	Index	647