The Effect of Gendered Roles in the Bible on the Participation of Women in Church Leadership: A Case Study of Ruchu Catholic Parish in Kenya

Abstract

The aim of the study was to investigate the effects of gendered communication styles in the Bible on women’s participation in church leadership. One of the specific objectives was to examine the effect of gendered roles in the Bible and their effect on women’s participation in church leadership. The study examined the gendered roles as they appear in four sampled books in the New Testament of The New International Version of the Bible. The New Testament was chosen since it lays the basis for church governments as we have them today. The study was carried out in Ruchu Parish in Murang’a Catholic Diocese in Kenya. The choice of the Catholic Church was informed by the fact that the church has definite and elaborate leadership hierarchy, from the global level to the units in the church. It is also one of the first churches to be established after the death of Christ. Ruchu Parish was selected because it has a long history of the presence of the church since it was established by European missionaries in 1901. Descriptive research design was employed for the study with the use of content analysis and the questionnaire to collect data. Content analysis was used to systematically analyse the gendered communication, which in this case were the gendered roles in the Bible. The questionnaire was used to collect data on the effects of gendered roles in the church on women’s participation in church leadership. The results were then analysed using the Statistical Package for Social Sciences (SPSS). It was then presented in form of charts and tables for discussion.
Keywords: Gendered communication, Gendered roles, Women, Church, Leadership.