Allow me to start by stating a controversial fact: the Bible thoroughly and consistently affirms gender equality [1]. Seeing as I have demonstrated and defended this elsewhere, I will move on to the particular example of gender equality taught in the Bible that this post will focus on. The Bible consistently teaches that children are to honor their parents--not just their father or their mother, but both simultaneously. In this way the Bible denies the ideology of any society or individual that restricts the parental authority of one gender or elevates it over that of the other. This also serves as one of numerous ways one can verify that the Bible does not minimize the value, importance, authority, or influence of women. In codifying that mothers receive the same degree of honor and obedience as fathers, Mosaic Law overtly distances itself from misogyny in the realm of parental power. Allowing maternal authority to flourish is one way the Bible shows great respect to women and has them stand alongside men!
A trio of verses from two consecutive chapters of Exodus highlight this (other examples exist in Leviticus and Deuteronomy, but these three are sufficient for showing my point).
Exodus 20:12--"Honor your father and your mother, so that you may live long in the land the Lord your God is giving you."
Exodus 21:15--"Anyone who attacks his father or his mother must be put to death."
Exodus 21:17--"Anyone who curses his father or mother must be put to death."
From chapters 20 and 21 of Exodus alone it is clear that the Bible does not grant either a father or mother more authority over their children than the other. Children are instructed to honor and obey (when there are no commands which contradict reason or Scripture) both their mothers and fathers, for God did not reserve parental authority exclusively for parents of one gender. Exodus 21 details how a child was not to curse or physically assault his or her parents, with the same punishment of execution assigned for inflicting either crime on one's father or mother. Mosaic Law does not treat a father as if he has more value or parental authority than his wife, with whom he is supposed to become one (Genesis 2:24), and vice versa.
As John Locke, the Christian empiricist, writes in his Second Treatise of Government, it is parental authority and not paternal authority that God prescribes in the Bible. Locke correctly points out that both reason and Christian revelation affirm this mutuality in parental authority:
"It may perhaps be censured as an impertinent criticism, in a discourse of this nature, to find fault with words and names . . . and yet possibly it may not be amiss to offer new ones, when the old are apt to lead men into mistakes, as this of paternal power probably has done, which seems so to place the power of parents over their children wholly in the father, as if the mother had no share in it; whereas, if we consult reason or revelation, we shall find, she hath an equal title.
. . . And accordingly we see the positive law of God every where joins them together, without distinction, when it commands the obedience of children, Honour thy father and thy mother, Exod. xx. 12. Whosoever curseth his father or his mother, Lev. xx. 9. Ye shall fear every man his mother and his father, Lev. xix. 3. Children, obey your parents, &c. Eph. vi. 1. is the stile of the Old and New Testament." (30)
In the text quoted Locke describes how the phrase paternal power can be misleading because some take it to mean that a father possesses more parental authority than a mother does simply by nature of being a man. As Locke himself points out, reason refutes any attempt to argue for imbalance in parental authority based in gender and the Bible consistently credits both mothers and fathers with equal authority.
The presence of legislation suppressing the authority of women in parenting children would signify a major misogynistic teaching. But the Bible clearly does not do so. Its commands and teaching regarding the relationship between parents and their children exemplifies values of gender equality consistent with the very first chapter of the Bible, where it is openly written that men and women have an equal ontological value before God, as they both bear his image. Any doctrine that seeks to empower one without doing the same to the other does not originate from Christianity.
Second Treatise of Government. Locke, John. Ed. Macpherson, C. B. Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing Company, 1980. Print.
[1]. That gender equality in an ontological sense and in the context of everyday life is taught by Scripture is made explicitly blatant in many portions of the Bible, including the Genesis creation account which credits both men and women with bearing the image of God (Genesis 1:27) and sections of Mosaic Law that prescribe gender equality before God's revealed legal system (Exodus 21:26-27, for instance). It is obvious from an objective reading of the Bible that according to Christianity men and women have equal value before God and stand (or can and should stand) alongside each other as friends and equals, both inside and outside of marriage relationships. See here for more on this matter:
A. https://thechristianrationalist.blogspot.com/2016/07/bible-on-gender-equality.html
B. https://thechristianrationalist.blogspot.com/2016/12/the-bible-never.html
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