Online Course on ‘Gender & Biblical Equality’ – 2025

Introduction

This topic has global importance as the UN’s fifth ‘Sustainable Development Goal’ (SDG) is Gender Equality & Women Empowerment (out of 17 SDG for UN Framework of Covid-19 Recovery). However, the Christian community in our sub-continent has generally failed to address gender concerns or issues relevantly and adequately from a biblical and theological perspective.

The lack of proper understanding and practice of gender equality could be seen as one of the major root causes of all social evils like dowry, abortion, sexual abuse, rape, female feticide, breakdown in marriage etc. So it is high time we equip our youngsters to face the various challenges of gender concerns in home, work place, church and wider society, and thus to represent God’s concerns in this world as His image bearers and representatives. It is with this purpose that TRACI is offering this course. We intend to cover the following topics/themes in this course: Theological foundation to address gender & gender equality, Gender Diversity & Inclusion, Barriers & Challenges for Gender Equality, Gender & Leadership – Church/Workplace/Society, Gender Concerns of Marriage and Home. Gender based Violence, and Legal Awareness on Gender.

Objectives of the Course

1. To provide a conceptual/theoretical understanding of gender and gender equality in order to gain better awareness about gender disparities and issues concerning gender inequality.
2. To explore the theological foundation to address gender concerns and gender equality.
3. To develop critical thinking and provide a framework through which we will analyse and respond to various gender issues in our context today.
4. To create awareness among trainees about various policies, goals, campaigns, processes and methods at different levels (local, national and global) to tackle the issues of gender concerns and gender equality.
5. To raise more gender-sensitive individuals in order to build up communities of gender-justice by integrating our Christian faith with gender concerns.