Role Reversal… What if?

The lecturer, a smartly dressed woman in her early 40s, stood at the dais and waited for the room to quieten before beginning her presentation.

Once the auditorium was still, she cleared her voice…

“Welcome everyone to the first lecture of this Academic year; religious history is a fascinating subject to study, and I hope you will find this course both interesting and informative.”

There was a ripple of appreciation in the audience of mainly young people, a more or less even split of female and males. This gender balance was relatively unusual and the historian mentally noted the fact. Unlike many of her peers, she was glad to see imbalances being addressed - to her mind, it was about time.

Pressing a button on the small device in her right hand she illuminated the screen behind her and an image of the archetypal Eve and Adam appeared.

Nodding her head at the image she said, “We all recognise this imagery don’t we? We all know the story that says Eve was created first in the very image of God, and that Adam was formed from one of her ribs.”

In the audience, heads bobbed up and down in agreement.

“Have you ever stopped to think how this religious iconography, and the biblical references actually shaped the way our world operates? Did you know that prior to the advent of written history, and to be honest even later than that, it was men that were often perceived as the stronger sex?”

She could hear rumblings around the room, her teachings were controversial, but they were the reason that so many wanted to attend her classes. In recent years there had been a subtle shift in perception throughout the world. Gender stereotyping and rules, deeply ingrained for so long in the culture, were beginning to change. But it was a slow process, those in command in both politics and industry - the female ruling classes -?were quite naturally reluctant to loosen the reins of power. They clung desperately to the old ways of doing things, but change was coming. They knew it. They didn’t like it. They fought to hang on. But their time was numbered.

She had their full attention now. A click of the button revealed the next set of slides containing images of men, both young and old, being stoned to death, burnt at stakes, and tortured. The students flinched, sitting in the 21st century such practices seemed alien to them; after all, society had long since stopped putting men to death for daring to speak out, practice medicine, refuse to cover their faces in public, or any of the multitudinous sins they could have been accused of.

The past had been at times barbaric, and every right thinking woman accepted this, many wanted to effect change. And some even spoke about equality, inclusion and diversity of gender in the workplace. But it was a slow process, a slow and frustrating one. Changing hearts, minds, tradition, AND religious doctrine was never going to be easy.

“I’d like you all to consider something.” The lecturer said once the shock and revulsion at the images had subsided somewhat. “What it men carried and bore children. What if instead of being the ones staying at home to look after the infants as we have all been inculcated to believe is the best choice for our babies…what if our men were able to have all the benefits of continuous employment that we women have.

“Yes, women are the physical bearer of a child, but once they are recovered from delivery they are back at work. Back making the money. Back running the world. Back making the rules and setting the agenda.

“How different would the world be if women and men shared the burden of childcare allowing each gender to fulfil their potential in society?”

There was silence around the room as the students took this novel idea onboard. Most, if not all of them would have grown up in a household where the father stayed at home when they were small. Perhaps returning to a role after several years raising children only to find that younger women had jumped past them in the promotion stakes, leaving them mired in dead end jobs with little chance of betterment.

Meanwhile their wives had climbed the career ladder and on the way seduced younger, more interesting men, leaving the husband behind them. Many a husband was heard to bemoan the fact that they kept the home together whilst their wife “played away”. But they stayed in the marriage because they didn’t feel they had viable alternatives - working was hard as a single man with children, too much to juggle to climb the ladder to career success.

A young man in the middle of the auditorium raised his hand to ask a question. The lecturer gave him the go-ahead.

“Why do you think men have been seen as the weaker, less capable sex?”

She smiled…

“I go back to the very first image! We humans seem to like someone, some greater power”, she employed the ‘air quote’ symbol, “to tell us what to do! What we refer to as Christianity bears little resemblance to the original doctrine which seems to have been very gender balanced, and all about love and community. However, the old priestesses, and queens of the time began to see power slipping away and so instructed that religious tracts for inclusion in the ‘one true book’ be selected only from those that portrayed women as the rulers and decision makers.

“It was a very simple matter from that point to keep men submissive. After all, if God herself says men are the lesser sex, then who were the populace to disagree? And don’t forget, the kind of punishments I showed you earlier, were a very good deterrent to men stepping outside of the boundaries imposed by society!”

She could feel the questions swirling around her students heads’. For many this would have been the first time they had dared to question what they had been raised to believe as the one truth.

Young men were seen as rebels for daring to challenge societies perceptions and claim back their birth rights. And the young women who supported them, who shared child rearing, shared parental leave, shared the chores and the myriad other things needed to be both a good parent AND have a career…well they were seen as idiots for upsetting the status quo and for letting men take back their power.

It would take time, thought the lecturer, for things to balance out. And yet the Universe craves balance, Yang is needed just as much as Yin…without a balance of feminine and masculine, the world would always be out of kilter. She hoped one day to see a world were all were respected, all were considered equals - in the meantime, she would continue, in her own quiet way, to inform young minds.

? Laura Billingham 2022