Month: October,2019

WOMEN IN THE WORKPLACE – 2019

October 16, 2019 By dwayman

A primary consequence of the Fall in Genesis is the subjugation of women throughout history and throughout the world.  A  primary Gospel implication is that in the Kingdom of God this curse will be reversed back to God’s original intention of equality and mutual responsibility to care for God’s world.

However, even in the places where Christianity has been imbedded within the culture for centuries the echo of the curse continues.  In an article in the WSJ the author digests an exhaustive study of Women in the Workplace – 2019 with these observations:

“The numbers tell a stark story: Though women and men enter the workforce in roughly equal numbers, men outnumber women nearly 2 to 1 when they reach that first step up—the manager jobs that are the bridge to more senior leadership roles. In real numbers, that will translate to more than one million women across the U.S. corporate landscape getting left behind at the entry level over the next five years as their male peers move on and upward, perpetuating a shortage of women in leadership positions.

Few efforts are likely to remedy the problem as much as tackling the gender imbalance in initial promotions into management …   If companies in the U.S. continue to make the same, tiny gains in the numbers of women they promote and hire into management every year, it will be another 30 years before the gap between first-level male and female managers closes, McKinsey estimates.

ARTIFACTS DEPICT WOMEN CLERGY IN EARLY CHURCH

October 14, 2019 By dwayman
‘Women are seen at the church altar in three of the most important churches in Christendom’

JULY, 2019

by Sarah MacDonald

“New research recently unveiled in Rome suggests women had a greater role in the early church’s ministries and liturgies than previously thought and were present at church altars as deacons, priests and even bishops.

Ally Kateusz, research associate at the Wijngaards Institute for Catholic Research, presented her findings July 2 to the International Society of Biblical Literature, drawing on iconography from ancient Christian art.

A specialist in the history of late antiquity, she has taught at both Webster University and the University of Missouri-Kansas City. She told the conference, which was held at the Pontifical Gregorian University in Rome, that three of the earliest surviving images of Christians worshipping at church altars show women in official liturgical roles.

One of the artifacts she bases her findings on is an ivory reliquary box dating from around A.D. 430 that depicts a man and a woman standing on either side of an altar, each raising a chalice. The altar is that of Old St. Peter’s Basilica in Rome. The gesture of raising a chalice is recognized as a liturgical act performed by priests.

Two other artifacts also depict women at altars: One is a sixth century ivory pyx of the Church of the Holy Sepulcher in Jerusalem, and the other is a stone sarcophagus front from the Hagia Sophia in Constantinople,