I am Kyle's self-indulgence

Good to see you posting again. So, here's my question for you: how do you deal with the role women are allowed to play in the independent Christian church? (It drives me crazy, if you didn't know that already.) For instance: at Ozark Christian College, a male student takes a 'Homiletics' course. Females have an equivalent--'Advanced Public Speaking'--or they can audit the male class. The reasoning is that women will never be called upon to use their homiletic skills in the Christian church, therefore, they do not need this class. Grrr. If I've learned anything from attending countless female Christian church speakers, at the adult and high school level, it is that they suck. Seriously, they talk about chocolate, and about how your future husband will worship you, and more about how chocolate relates to God....bleck. Maybe this works for some women, but not this one. Just wondered what you thought.

i have a good friend i went to bible college with who played football in high school and took preaching class at college. sure her family didn't care for it and neither did the school but she did it. she's going to school now to become a lawyer. probably what preturbs me most is the inequality in regards to income between men and women and it's still a very big problem... definitely on the backburner i believe. for some reason, the book you mentioned reminds of nickel and dimed.

Sara- You're right, I think that even those who believe women shouldn't be teaching men generally agree that they can teach other women, thus making a course like you described useful for them (not to mention the people listening to or reading them). I have also noticed some of the sugar-coated, intellectually insulting language in Christian women's books. I believe that if it were placed in any category other than "women's" there would be a revolt. I have definitely read entire chapters on appropriate housekeeping techniques for being a good Christian wife, as well as read that mothers who work outside of the home are spiritually lacking. Kyle's favorite is Stormie Omartian (sp?), of the Power of a Praying... fame. In the book for husbands all the analogies are about sports and auto mechanics. Guess what the women's examples consist of?

Meredith and I completely agree with you both on the Independant Christian church (or most churches, for that matter), on the treatment of women. It is one of our main beefs with christianity today. The bad thing is that so many are a sucker for it. It utterly disgusts me... but that is a 45 min rant in itself.

For instance: at Ozark Christian College, a male student takes a 'Homiletics' course. Females have an equivalent--'Advanced Public Speaking'--or they can audit the male class. Are you serious? That is one of the most ridiculous things that I have ever heard.

I decided someone needed to play the part of the uninformed chauvinistic pig :). No, seriously, I may have a different perspective because of my business background. I agree with much of what's been said above. Women certainly are discriminated against in the church, and the whole college class thing, well that's downright ridiculous. Back to the issue in the original post, though. I don't think that the fact that lady foot locker doesn't sell women's shorts in winter indicates discrimination against women in the marketplace. If there are a lot of women who want athletic shorts in winter, lady foot locker would be foregoing a profitable business simply to discriminate. The first rebuttal likely to come to mind in response is that it's much more subtle than that. However, I am fairly certain that lady foot locker has an army of market research analysts (many of whom are women) who spend their entire working day trying to figure out that women will buy 1% more of this than that. I think it is more likely that women's shorts don't sell in winter , and that is a case where the market is demanding a different mix of goods than one individual. I also think that the very existence of lady foot locker is proof of the progress women have made, and that the name "foot locker" sans "men's" is not evidence of backwardness. Footlocker was founded over 30 years ago, when, with title IX just beginning to change things, and with more explicit disrimination, women were involved in far fewer sports than men. Because of this, early on, footlocker was primarily a mens store simply based on the market. Women's participation increased at such a dramatic pace that the company decided it could support an entire subsidiary wholly devoted to the athletic needs of women. Should it have changed the name of the original store when this happened? I don't think so-especially when much of what footlocker sells is sold to adolescents. On the question of equal pay. Economists have done a number of sophisticated studies over the years on pay. If you control (i.e. do a sophisticated regression) for age, years of experience, education, etc., women make over 90% of what men do, not the 60%-70% that's often thrown around in the press. Is there still implicit discrimination that steers women toward lower paying careers? Of course. However, the biggest contributor to the pay differential is that women often make career choices to allow them to pursue other priorities (i.e. raising a family) that reduce their earnings either by industry choice, or by leaves of absence in the marketplace. Does discrimination still exist? Of course it does. However, I don't think the observations above indicate disrimination, though they do make for a good and funny story. Zac

Oh Zac, you're so REASONABLE. I'm sure you're right about the Lady Foot Locker thing. If there were a demand for shorts in the winter I'm sure they'd sell them. I guess my point, though, is- why isn't there a demand for shorts in the winter? Does nobody work out indoors? This makes no sense to me. Truman's Rec Center was packed with shorts-wearing people yesterday, and it was like 12 degrees here. The men could have bought their shorts at Foot Locker over Christmas break. Where did the women get theirs? I guess they bought them during the summer. My main beef is with the local sporting goods store. It's the only one in town, a college town even, a college town with several national-championship-winning women's sports teams... I'll stop before I get too worked up, but my guess is that the local store didn't do any of the market research you discussed. As for the equal pay for women argument, that was not my post in the first place. Whether the gap is smaller or larger, though, we all admit it still exists to some degree. You may be right about the cause being women seeking more family-oriented positions. We wouldn't want to risk being called spiritually lacking by Christian women's authors, now, would we? Just trying to tie it all together, folks!

i honestly dont care at all

And I, for one, am certainly grateful that you took the time to let us know about your complete lack of interest.