Gender roles today are a far cry from what they used to be, particularly as far as women are concerned. Until not long ago women were primarily regarded as little more than homemakers and child-bearers. Today it’s perfectly acceptable for a woman not only to have a career, but even to enter traditionally male-dominated careers like the military and even auto racing.
But perceptions of gender roles appear to be bending beyond mere job functions. There are those today who are defying traditional gender roles and asserting that gender itself is a flexible concept that should be detached from biological sex. Therefore, they say, it should be acceptable for women to identify as men and vice versa.
I don’t support this idea, but neither do I think that women should revert to being “barefoot and pregnant,” or that a man doesn’t belong behind the hairdresser’s chair. I don’t believe that gender is primarily about what men and women do. It’s not about girls playing house and boys playing with trucks. I believe gender is about characteristics we express.
I believe God did an amazing and brilliant thing by dividing humanity into two sexes with very different natures. This makes each sex dependent on the other for the characteristics it lacks. Women tend to be more nurturing, social, and emotional. Men tend to be more aggressive, physical, and problem-solving. In general, our biological features seem to support these attributes.
Yet these attributes can be expressed in ways that differ from the stereotypes. A feminine woman can be a construction worker as much as a masculine man can be an interior designer. As a Christian woman who grew up loving baseball more than Barbie, I’ve thought a lot about God’s intentions behind gender. I’ve come to believe that healthy gender identity is not about shoehorning people into fixed roles, but about men and women, boys and girls, expressing the nature that God designed their sex to express, however that may work itself out externally.
