I suppose I was a little shocked. I had supposed that gender-restrictive practices in education were anathema to the Christian religion and belonged somewhere in the more extreme conservative wings of Islamicism. How wrong I was.
According to a new report, Whose Hands on our Education, by the Overseas Development Institute and featured in the Guardian this week, both the conservative evangelical and the more Catholic wings of the church are heavily involved in gender-restrictive educational practices, and their campaigns are well funded.
Tactics have included such things as removing sex education from schools, reinforcing patriarchal gender stereotypes in textbooks and rejecting gender-inclusive language.
Education is so important. It is an indicator of the values that we hold and how we want those values to feed into the development of our children. Ayesha Khan, senior research fellow at the ODI and one of the authors of the report, said: “Education is a key enabler for gender equality and has the power to shape lives.”
The type of education that we want to see in our schools is an indication of the sort of people, and the sort of Christians, that we are. Do we want our children to embrace a future with gender-equality and openness, or would we rather that future was characterised by traditional gender stereotypes and restrictions on our rights?
Read the story here.