An Assessment of the Gender Dimension to Biblical Teachings on Dressing in General and Trousers for Women in Particular

The Bible is the standard for Christianity yet the scriptures do not seem to give a normative direction in matters of dressing in general and women’s attire in particular. The main objective of this paper was to examine the Biblical teaching on dressing in general, and for women in particular. The literature review was carried out using themes drawn from the objective. The study was guided by the liberal feminism theory. This theory was used to establish if there were individual rights and equal opportunities as a basis for social justice and reform in Church. This study adopted descriptive survey design to present data thus it was involved in studying the situation as it is in an attempt to explain why the situation is the way it is. The sampling techniques were stratified random sampling, purposive and simple random sampling. Purposive sampling was used to select the clergy and their spouses, stratified random sampling was used to select the representative sample from the target population of the general faithful and the simple random technique was used to sample respondents for the Focus Group Discussion. The study instruments were interview schedule, questionnaires, Focus Group Discussions and document review. The validity of the instruments was established through content validity by experts from the school arts and social sciences, Masinde Muliro University. The study found out that there is gender bias against women in church. Patriarchy of the African society had been carried to, and perpetuated by the church through formulation of rules and erroneous interpretation of the Bible to favor paternalistic positions on issues of dressing translating to a church that is oppressive to the womenfolk. The paper recommended that the church should initiate training programs for the clergy and other leaders in hermeneutics and exegesis for better leadership and training skills on matters of dressing. Women should also be allowed freedom of choice according to the constitution. This study shall add to the existing pool of knowledge in Religious and Gender studies and bring about liberation to oppressed women so that they can freely contribute to development.