If god had been created as a female by the authors of the Bible instead of a male, would women have been treated very differently over the centuries? In my opinion, god was only given the male gender because in the ancient world men were considered to be superior to the female. If any god does exist it is more likely to be genderless.
Oddly enough, Floo, the Judeo-Christian God was NOT created as a male by the authors of the Bible. There are 144 names for God throughout bthe Bible and exactly half of them are feminine and half are masculine. Over the millennia there have been a number of important female characters in the story - some good, some bad - so not much different from the men in the Bible.
Women featured in the Bible aren't treated well on the whole, but as reproductive machines for the most part. Solomon's many concubines obviously played a big part in keeping his dangly bits busy! Did they do it willingly, or more likely did they have no say in the matter?
Can you provide an example of any culture contemporaneous with the Old Testament story that was any different?
Whilst most Christian women these days demand to be treated as equal to men, more extreme male members of the faith still expect them to be subservient to their wishes using the Bible as an excuse.
As has been pointed out on the numerous threads that have touched on this issue in the past, the early Christian church developed in a context where men were deemed more important than women, so the fact that during its first 2-300 years, before the Roman Empire effectively hijacked the church in the West, the early church had a number of women in leadership would have been seen as counter-cultural and revolutionary. Rather than standing out against this institutionalisation by the Romans, the leaders of the time felt that it would be a useful means to accelerate the growth of Christianity across the world. A perfectly legitimate thought process; sadly, they seemed to leave behind some of the practices that had made them stand out up until that point.
There is very little woman can't do that men can, and visa versa. You never know, one day men might evolve enough to become pregnant!
I would disagree on a number of levels, and I would suggest that then laltter is extremely unlikely, even (perhaps especially) if women were to disappear completely, or men were genetically modified artificially. There are huge psychological and biological differences between men and women - many related to the different roles the two genders take in the survival of the species.
Is there anyone on this forum who thinks men and women should stay trapped in the traditional roles society and religion had placed upon them?
And what would those 'traditional roles' be, Floo? For instance, are you trying to suggest that women oughtn't to be 'trapped' in the roles that their biological make-up so brilliantly enables them to carry out?