Christian Relief, Development, and Advocacy 6(2), Winter 2025  

Jones and Odhiambo, Destigmatizing Eve… 59 

 
 

Destigmatizing Eve:  
 

Tackling the Underlying Culture of Patriarchal Honor and Shame 

Undermining the Work of Christian Relief and Development 
 

 

“Fall” 
Die Bibel in Bildern [Picture Bible],  
Julius Schnorr von Carolsfeld,1860. 

 

Emily Nielsen Jones and Jackline A. Odhiambo  
 

 

 
Christian relief and development (CRD) organizations work in patriarchal societies and cultures that 

devalue women and girls and limit the opportunities and rights they have. Through a theology of the 

“curse of Eve,” Christianity has extended this view of women as inferior, unclean, meant for 

subjugation, shameful, side-lined, and to blame for evil in the world. We explore how the theological 

and sociological drivers behind the “curse of Eve,” continue to have a shaming and blaming effect 

on females throughout the whole life cycle, with a vivid example of the experiences of widows in 

Kenya. The CRD sector has a strategic role in addressing theological and mythical roots of gender-

based oppression. We explore ways in which the CRD sector can transform the deep roots of this 

historic and global stigma and suggest some tools for tackling structural stigmatization of women and 

girls. 

 

 



Christian Relief, Development, and Advocacy 6(2), Winter 2025  

Jones and Odhiambo, Destigmatizing Eve… 60 

From a woman sin had its beginning, and because of 

her we all die. 

(Sirach 25:16-26, one of the oldest attributions of sin 

with Eve, and by extension,  

all women (Early 2022, 11)) 

 

Introduction 
Christian relief and development (CRD) 

organizations work in patriarchal societies and cultures 

that present a number of challenges, not least of which 

are the ways that females are devalued and the 

opportunities for women and girls to develop and use 

their gifts and skills to flourish are lacking.  

Unfortunately, this is a problem that affects CRD 

organizations as well as the societies they work in, and 

the sector has a mixed history when it comes to an 

understanding of, focus on, and commitment to the 

role of women in its organizations and programs.  On 

the one hand, a significant number of CRD actors have 

made gender balance, mainstreaming, and 

empowerment a significant focus of their efforts starting 

as early as the late 1970s and early 1980s (Bridget 1999; 

Tripp 1999).  Many others, however, have lagged 

significantly behind, as shown by the analysis conducted 

by Amy Reynolds in this volume.   

This article explores a long and enduring 

theological legacy—with mythic roots dating back to the 

advent of patriarchal societal norms in the third 

millennium BCE, continuing through early 

Mesopotamian and Hebrew culture into the early 

centuries of the church and then through all the 

significant epochs of Christendom—which viewed 

women as inferior and not made in the image of God. 

Indeed, women are considered inheritors of a 

shameful, inferior nature associated with evil and 

deception. This legacy lives on as an inherited psychic 

wound in our world today and underpins the societal, 

cultural, and organizational tendencies to limit the role 

that women play and the opportunities and rights that 

they have. This article posits that the Christian relief 

and development (CRD) sector has a strategic and high 

impact role to play in addressing not only the 

humanitarian symptoms of this ancient and systemic 

myth of female inferiority that lives on in our collective 

human subconsciousness, but also the theological and 

mythic roots that underlie gender-based sidelining and 

oppression. Only then can CRD live up to a unique role 

as “active restorers of shalom”—as described in the 

Principles for Gender Equality for Development 

Organizations (Wheaton Network Initiative n.d.)—in 

the larger global effort to create a more gender-balanced 

world in which all human beings can live together in a 

state of shared honor, mutuality, and shalom.   

In making this case, we present three main points.  

First, we argue that it is important to better understand, 

with love and humility, how our own tradition has 

participated, along with all of our world’s religions, in 

the oldest global stigmatization in human history: the 

denigration of the female half of the human family as 

inferior, unclean, meant for subjugation, shameful, 

side-lined, and to blame for evil in the world. At the 

core of this ancient yet enduring stigma lies a very old 

story—the “curse of Eve”—which has been passed down 

and reinterpreted through the ages and popularized 

into modern secular and Christian consciousness that 

came to associate evil, shame, and low moral character 

with Eve/women and likewise all things honorable and 

Godlike with men. As Tova Bernbaum describes in 

The Curse of Eve: A Jewish Perspective on Women in 

Society, “There is a primordial aspect to the struggle for 

[women’s] equality” deeply embedded in the mythic 

layers of modern society that defies logic and so much 

progress that has been made to shift to a more gender 

equal society” (2005, 1). This article traces how this 

harmful, hierarchical, ontological dualism (and related 

tendency to blame women for bad things that happen) 

was a thread present in the cultural fabric in which the 

Bible was written and interpreted over many centuries.  

Second, we consider how the legacies of this story 

of Eve/women as members of a stigmatized second 

class continue to loom large over gender norms in our 

world and, by extension, how it lives on in the global 

humanitarian realities that Christian relief and 

development (CRD) organizations address. We briefly 

examine the meaning and impact of stigma and how it 

applies to women and girls in particular. We then 

explore how the theological and sociological drivers 

behind the “curse of Eve,” continue to have a shaming 

and blaming effect on females throughout the whole life 

cycle.  We argue the deep gender dimensions of honor-

shame acculturation live within our own faith tradition 

and in our collective consciousness as a global family. 

Finally, we turn to a case study of widows in Kenya and 

the work of Nyanam Widows Rising to illustrate this 

problem. 

And third, we explore ways in which the CRD 

sector can work harder to transform the deep roots of 

this historic and global stigma that is still so laced with 

tradition and religion, and that is still alive and well in 

and around CRD.  In so doing, we suggest how CRD 

organizations can more proactively use their platforms 

of change and connection with Christian faith 

communities and the NGO sector around the world to 

do the needed work of deep healing and repair to 

restore “shalom” to our world’s gender norms. We 

must “destigmatize Eve” as the archetypal female who 

represents the female half of the human family. The 

CRD sector is uniquely positioned to do this deeper 

work beneath the surface of our world’s gender-based 

humanitarian scourge and to shine a light on the curse 

and stigma itself. Such work can loosen the grip of 

stigma’s stain on the invisible norms that are at play in 



Christian Relief, Development, and Advocacy 6(2), Winter 2025  

Jones and Odhiambo, Destigmatizing Eve… 61 

the particular religious and cultural context(s) where 

they are engaged. Five concrete practices are 

recommended. These include (1) naming and reversing 

the shaming of Eve, (2) cultivating a posture of curiosity 

around how this harmful Eve mythology became 

steeped within Christianity today and how we can read 

Scripture differently, (3) deep listening to women who 

have been stigmatized, (4) formal lamenting for the part 

the Church has played in this stigmatization, and lastly, 

(5) engaging in contemplative practices around this 

issue. 

 

Origins:  The Ancient Stigmatization of Eve 

and Inferiority of Women 
 

I wondered how such a situation came about, whereby 

half — in fact just over half — of the world’s population 

was created inferior to the other half? Whether this 

occurred at Eve’s birth, because a higher power 

decided to make something less than perfect or after a 

long process of evolution, this appeared nonsensical: 

the first seemed out of character, and by the second 

process, the number of females in the world would be 

decreasing through selection. So why and how did 

these myths about women’s inferiority arise and why 

did they persist so long?  

(Crandall 2012, 1) 

 
As people working within the Christian relief and 

development sector today who care about the uplift and 

dignity of women, we need to be curious and ask this 

question. We should be humble and mindful of the 

mixed history of Christianity on our world’s gender 

norms. Christianity remains the world’s largest religion, 

accounting for roughly a third of the global population 

(Zurlo et al. 2024, 50) and, over the course of its history, 

has left an indelible mark on our world, for good and 

for ill. Implicit in the work of CRD is the belief that 

there is something about Christianity that has been and 

continues to be a force behind human uplift, justice, 

and shared liberation. We rightly point to the example 

of Jesus and how he challenged the norms of the day to 

treat all human beings, including women, with dignity. 

His respect stood in contrast to the exclusion or inferior 

treatment of women that was the norm in the Middle 

Eastern culture of his day.   

In a world where patriarchal norms so stubbornly 

persist and are resurgent in virtually all cultures on this 

planet, we can proudly hold onto this example of Jesus 

and the earliest days of the Church as our north star. If 

we truly want to make strides in creating a better world 

and work with cultures that honor women and turn the 

page on the historic and global pandemic of systemic 

violence towards and devaluation of women and girls, 

we need to take the time to be curious, and to 

understand the particular way that Christianity has used 

its theological platform and social capital over the 

centuries. Theology has been used to sanction and 

perpetuate a harmful “honor gap” (Jones and Misolo 

2018) across the gender line, which elevated the 

masculine as honorable and Godlike, and stigmatized 

females as inferior, shameful, and to blame for bad 

things that happen in the world.  

As Joseph E. Early explains in Because of Eve: 

Historical and Theological Survey of the Subjugation of 

Women in the Christian Tradition, this inquiry rightly 

begins with the story of Eve. As Early points out, “The 

history of how men in the Bible define women begins 

with Eve. Because she was the first woman, and because 

of her role in the Fall, men have presented her as the 

archetype of all women” (2022, 2).  This is not an easy 

story to tell as there are many historical, cultural, and 

theological threads that have evolved over time to create 

the popularized story of Eve that we have received from 

the past. In every generation, how Eve is interpreted is 

a window into the gender norms of the day. To 

understand how Eve, and by extension all women, 

became stigmatized as an inferior, subjugated class of 

human beings, it is necessary to turn back the page and 

spotlight the ancient roots of this stigma, beginning 

within the early Israelite tradition and the early 

Christian fathers of the faith, who formulated the 

theological containers that we now understand as 

orthodox Christianity.  

 

 
 

The first point is that in the original Hebrew 

context, Eve actually had a high and exalted status as 

Chavah (חוה), the “Mother of all Living” who had a 

close connection with Creation and reflected the image 

and likeness of the Creator. “Eve” (/iːv/) is an English 

given name for a female derived from the Latin name 

Eva. It originates from the Hebrew ַחוָּה (Chavah/Havah 

– chavah), to breathe, and chayah, to live, or to give life. 

The traditional meaning of “Eve” is “life” or “living.” It 

can also mean “full of life” and “mother of life” (Meyers 

2021; Crispe 2006).  Yet over the centuries of 

Christendom, the Church Fathers created a “theology 



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Jones and Odhiambo, Destigmatizing Eve… 62 

of Eve” that became justification for the low, servile 

place women were expected to occupy in male-

dominated family and society that treated them like 

property. Customs emerged like polygamy, 

concubinage, wife beating, male inheritance, and 

particular dress codes that symbolized her shame and 

subjection. Purity codes treated normal bodily 

functions as unclean, and myriad forms of exclusion 

restricted women from the full sovereignty of 

adulthood.  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Don’t be such an Eve… Know your place… Eve 

didn’t complain, so why should you… and other 

variations of admonitions have been heard over many 

centuries in sermons, Bible studies, and marriage 

seminars the world over. These come directly from the 

theology developed by these Church Fathers centuries 

ago.  In fact, it is quite shocking to read passages today 

from these Church Fathers on the subject of Eve, and 

in what follows is a sampling of those passages. The 

Church Fathers made three main points in their 

stigmatization of Eve and hence of all women; first, Eve 

was the pathway for evil to enter the world and therefore 

bears the blame and shame; second, women inherently 

have that of Eve in them, insofar a tendency towards evil 

and duplicity; and third, Eve (and all women) are 

inferior to, and defective in comparison with, Adam in 

all dimensions. 

 

Eve and Women as  
the Source of Evil and Shame 

First, Eve is seen as the pathway through which evil 

entered the world, and as a result, all women are tainted 

in the same way. Tertullian, one of the earliest and most 

prominent of the church fathers born in 160 AD, is 

particularly graphic in his depiction:   

 

And do you not know that you are (each) an 

Eve? The sentence of God on this sex of yours 

lives in this age: the guilt must of necessity live 

too. You are the devil’s gateway: you are the 

unsealer of that (forbidden) tree: you are the first 

deserter of the divine law: you are she who 

persuaded him whom the devil was not valiant 

enough to attack. You destroyed so easily God’s 

image, man. On account of your desert—that is, 

death—even the Son of God had to die. And do 

you think about adorning yourself over and 

above your tunics of skins? (De Cultu 

Feminarium (On the Apparel of Women), 

Chapter 1, as cited by Mowczko 2013). 

 

Clement of Alexandria, a contemporary of 

Tertullian in the 2
nd

 century, theologized that given this 

inherently culpable nature of women, “[Women’s] very 

consciousness of their own nature must evoke feelings 

of shame” (Pedagogues II 33, 2, as cited in Tarico 

2013). 

The second main point of this theology is that 

women are inherently duplicitous temptresses.  “Watch 

out that she does not twist and turn you for the worse. 

What is the difference whether it is in a wife or a 

mother, it is still Eve the temptress that we must beware 

of in any woman,” cautions Augustine a few hundred 

years later (Letter to Laetus, Letter 243.10, as cited in 

Mowczko 2013).  

The third way that Eve, and by extension all 

women, were stigmatized from the early stages in the 

theology of the Church Fathers is by declaring that she 

was inferior and defective in all aspects as compared to 

Adam. The first line of argument along these lines is 

that she was not made fully in the image of God, as was 

Adam, a point expressed clearly by Augustine:   

 

. . . the woman together with her own husband is 

the image of God, so that that whole substance 

may be one image; but when she is referred 

separately to her quality of help-meet, which 

regards the woman herself alone, then she is not 

the image of God; but as regards the man alone, 

he is the image of God as fully and completely 

as when the woman too is joined with him in 

one” (On the Trinity 12.7.10, as cited in 

Mowczko 2013). 

 

As a result, theologized Origen in the 2
nd

-3
rd

 century, 

God regards women as inferior as well, in that “What is 

seen with the eyes of the Creator is masculine, and not 

feminine, for God does not stoop to look upon what is 

feminine and of the flesh” (Selecta in 

Exodum (Fragments on Exodus), Patrologia 

Graeca 12, Column 296–297, as cited in Mowczko 

2013). 

This argument that women are not made fully in 

the image of God was joined with the argument that 

women are inherently inferior intellectually, morally, 

and spiritually, as Augustine also details:   

 

I don’t see what sort of help woman was created 

to provide man with, if one excludes 

procreation. If woman is not given to man for 



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Jones and Odhiambo, Destigmatizing Eve… 63 

help in bearing children, for what help could she 

be? To till the earth together? If help were 

needed for that, man would have been a better 

help for man. The same goes for comfort in 

solitude. How much more pleasure is it for life 

and conversation when two friends live together 

than when a man and a woman cohabitate?” “. . 

. woman was given to man, woman who was of 

small intelligence and who perhaps still lives 

more in accordance with the promptings of the 

inferior flesh than by superior reason. Is this why 

the apostle Paul does not attribute the image of 

God to her? (De Genesi ad literam (The Literal 

Meaning of Genesis) 9.5.9, 11.42, as cited in 

Mowczko 2013) 

 

By the 13
th

 century, this misogynistic theology was well 

established, as seen in the words of Aquinas:   

 

But woman is naturally of less strength and 

dignity than man . . . As regards the individual 

nature, woman is defective and misbegotten, for 

the active force in the male seed tends to the 

production of a perfect likeness in the masculine 

sex; while the production of woman comes from 

a defect in the active force or from some material 

indisposition, or even from some external 

influence. Such as that of a south wind, which is 

moist, as the Philosopher observes… One is 

servile, by virtue of which a superior makes use 

of a subject for his own benefit; and this kind of 

subjection began after sin. There is another kind 

of subjection which is called economic or civil, 

whereby the superior makes use of his subjects 

for their own benefit and good; and this kind of 

subjection existed even before sin. For good 

order would have been wanting in the human 

family if some were not governed by others wiser 

than themselves. So by such a kind of subjection 

woman is naturally subject to man, because in 

man the discretion of reason predominates” 

(Summa Theologica, Vol. I, Q. 92, Art. 1, 

Objection 2, Reply to Objection 1, as cited in 

Mowczko 2013) 

 

Moreover, many leading figures of the Reformation, 

such as Martin Luther, John Calvin, and John Knox, 

draw on and propagate these arguments. According to 

Knox,  

 

Nature I say, paints [women] further to be weak, 

frail, impatient, feeble and foolish: and 

experience has declared them to be inconstant, 

variable, cruel and lacking the spirit of counsel 

and regiment [or, leadership]…Woman in her 

greatest perfection was made to serve and obey 

man . . . (The First Blast of the Trumpet Against 

the Monstrous Regiment of Women, as cited in 

Mowczko 2013). 

 

Thankfully, there are other theological currents 

within church history that affirm that women too 

possess the image of God, such as the Reformation 

concepts like the priesthood of all believers and the 

right of all people to read the Bible, the Quaker notion 

of “inner light” and mysticism, and minority viewpoints 

within the dominantly patriarchal heritage of the church 

that have sought to reclaim the spiritual equality we see 

in the gospels. Yet the negative male stereotypes of 

women as morally deficient and more prone to sin 

persisted into the modern era of the church and still to 

this day. Justifications to exclude women from 

leadership in the family, church, and society continue 

to center around the same appeals to Eve as the 

originator of sin in the world and the need for women 

to “know their place” in the created, biblical order. It is 

to these legacies that we now turn. 

 

The Legacies of Interpreting Eve: A Mirror 

of Larger Cultural and Theological Shifts  

 
We are living inside the dreams of dead people. All 

these kings, priests and poets from hundreds of  

years ago created powerful stories that still shape how 

we behave and think today.  

It’s as if these dead people are still controlling us from 

beyond the grave  

(Harari and Ruiz 2022,  

as cited in McKenzie 2022) 

 
How the story of Eve was and is interpreted has 

shaped how generations of humans over the millennia 

have come to think about what it means to be a female 

human being. One cannot ignore how the dominant 

Christianized retelling of the story of Eve has shaped 

gender norms over many centuries and made women 

scapegoats for evil done by men to them (Milne 1989). 

As Christians, most of us have inherited the negative, 

shaming and blaming theology of Eve that continues to 

persist in our churches, ministries, non-profits and, 

most of all, within our collective imaginations.  

As CRD practitioners, we need to guard against the 

tendency to focus on what we know to be the positive, 

liberating message of the gospel and be willing to look 

at the underbelly of the dominant trajectory of 

Christianity and its complicity in the global stigma that, 

from cradle to grave, still looms large over the female 

half of the human family. Anyone engaged in some 

aspect of CRD related to the multifaceted conditions 

that surround women’s and girls’ lives knows well the 

continued pervasive cultural devaluation of females that 



Christian Relief, Development, and Advocacy 6(2), Winter 2025  

Jones and Odhiambo, Destigmatizing Eve… 64 

persists in our world, and which exposes them to much 

emotional, psychological, and physical harm, and 

continually sidelines them from full participation in 

society. It is chilling how the human penchant for 

scapegoating a group deemed inferior continues to be 

manifest in the sexual double standard that we see 

around the world where victims of sexual violence are 

all too often blamed and shamed for not wearing the 

right clothes and “causing a man to stumble.” Delving 

into this topic can be uncomfortable but can open a 

doorway of understanding to better understand the 

negative impact that Christianity has played in the 

evolution of gender norms in our world. We do not 

need to beat ourselves up, but learn how we can address 

root causes and be part of positive change in creating 

the safer and more mutually respectful world we seek 

for all human beings. Three issues will help us 

understand these legacies better; (1) the meaning and 

impact of stigma, (2) the lingering effect of the 

patriarchal culture of honor and shame, and (3) the way 

the latter is upheld through systems justification.   

 

The Meaning, Operation, and  

Impact of Stigma 
We all know on some level what stigma is, but 

unpacking it and explaining how it functions helps us in 

two main ways;  first, to better isolate and illuminate 

humanity’s oldest stigma of  gender-based oppression, 

and second, to understand how it continues to be 

shrouded in the collective human imagination through 

cherished traditions, symbols, and religious mythology 

that give it a type of fixed idea of “just the way things 

are.”  We look briefly at several definitions of stigma 

and how it tends to operate, and then consider how the 

stigmatization of women and girls functions today. 

First, the term “stigma” derives from the Latin 

word stigmat which referred to a brand or mark burned 

into the skin of enslaved people, criminals, and those 

deemed traitors. These marks were used to identify 

certain groups of people as “blemished” and impure 

and worthy of being shunned (Swaim 2023). Dictionary 

definitions of stigma are “a mark of shame or discredit: 

stain” (Merriam Webster Dictionary n.d.), “a mark of 

disgrace associated with a particular circumstance, 

quality, or person” (Oxford Languages Dictionary n.d.), 

and “a mark of disgrace or infamy; a stain or reproach, 

as on one’s reputation” (Dictionary.com).  

Second, the study of how stigma operates began 

most prominently in the 1960s, when sociologist Erving 

Goffman defined it as an “attribute that is deeply 

discrediting” and that disqualifies a person from full 

social acceptance (Goffman 1963, as cited in Clair 

2018, 1).  Goffman’s study of stigma makes four 

important points for the purposes of this article.  First, 

stigmas can be hard to detect because they are so 

embedded in the cultural/religious fabric and reflect a 

subconscious valuing that cannot be addressed by 

humanitarian interventions alone.  Second, and related 

to the first, the real challenge with stigma is that it can 

persist for many generations as we see across many 

racial and ethnic stratifications globally. Third, stigma 

operates at both micro and macro levels, “restricting the 

well-being of stigmatized individuals” (micro) and 

operating on a structural level (macro) with 

“population-level consequences, and collective 

responses… reproduc[ing] social inequality through the 

maintenance of group hierarchies” (Clair 2018, 

abstract).  And fourth, the relevance of the study of 

stigma has been not only to understand how it 

functions, but most importantly, as Clair states, to 

“identify the conditions that foster destigmatization” 

(Clair 2018, abstract).   

Goffman’s broad definition of stigma touches on 

many contemporary “discredited attributes,” including 

what he defines as “tribal stigmas” (e.g., race, ethnicity, 

and religion), “physical deformities” (e.g., deafness, 

blindness, and leprosy), and “blemishes of character” 

(e.g., homosexuality, addiction, mental illness), but it 

does not specifically address gender (Clair 2018, 1).  In 

fact, it is notable that in most places where different 

categories of stigma are mentioned in the studies above, 

there is little to no addressing of the first and the oldest 

form of stigma that lives on within other stigmas and 

cuts across most cultures: the patriarchal denigration of 

the female.  This is in part because the stigmatization of 

females goes back to pre-history, making it hard to 

trace, even though it is embedded in all the world’s 

venerable traditions that have shaped our collective 

imaginations and mental models upon which 

civilization was built.    

Because gender-based beliefs, practices, and 

norms are so laced with venerable tradition and 

religious narrative that live on in our collective 

imagination and give patriarchy a holy sounding 

sanction and immovability, we tend not to see gender 

stratification in the same vein as racial and ethnic forms 

of stigma that led to horrific incidents of genocide 

and/or slavery. Because biological females make up half 

of the human family and because this form of 

oppression is so ancient and laden with venerable 

tradition that has shaped our collective imagination, it is 

hard to name and see the stigmatization of females in 

the same vein as more well-recognized stigmatized 

minority groups, which leads to an examination of the 

second aspect of the legacies of the theologies of 

stigmatization developed by the Church Fathers around 

women; the way that they were and are a part of the 

structures of patriarchy that continue to operate today.   

 

  



Christian Relief, Development, and Advocacy 6(2), Winter 2025  

Jones and Odhiambo, Destigmatizing Eve… 65 

The Lingering Hold of the Patriarchal 

Culture of Honor with Shamed & Blamed 

Females as Inferior & Evil 

 
… for even though the feminine voice is gaining 

prominence in our society,  

her essence remains mostly in the shadows. That 

essence is part of a truth that  

patriarchal culture buried thousands of years ago and 

confined to the darkest corners  

of our memory. Yet its truth also remains in 

everything, and is within reach.  

(Warden 2022) 

 

We first briefly consider the definition of 

patriarchy, then explore how patriarchy operates to 

stigmatize women based on social stratification and the 

code of honor and shame. We conclude with an 

analysis of how the justification of patriarchy allows it to 

persist. 

First, the word “patriarchy” has a host of 

definitions, some more comprehensive than others. A 

basic definition, drawn from the Oxford English 

dictionary is that patriarchy is “a system of society or 

government in which men hold the power and women 

are largely excluded from it” (Oxford English 

Dictionary 2023). Most definitions of patriarchy define 

it in terms of male power/dominance over women, but 

there is a set of factors at play that illuminate what and 

how this social structure arose and functions (Christ 

2022). 

Second, the range of definitions and multifaceted 

nature of how patriarchy operates points to how it is, at 

its core, a structure of social stratification, rooted in 

stigma. As with all stratification, the superior group is 

deemed to be inherently made of a higher, more 

godlike substance and thus is deemed as a “master” 

worthy of ruling and owning others; and the inferior, 

stigmatized group is seen as inherently made of a lower, 

defective substance meant for subjugation and often 

associated with evil. When applied to women and girls 

today, we tend not to use the language of women being 

“unclean” as a reason for excluding women from 

leadership and participation in church life, even though 

this has been a consistent belief throughout 

humankind’s patriarchal heritage. The legacies of the 

theology of the Church Fathers in this regard are clear: 

prohibitions based on the presumed “ritual 

uncleanness” of women have remained in official 

Church Law for the last 700 years (Wijngaards Institute 

n.d.), and a stain of disgrace and lack of credibility still 

hangs over women and girls around the world. Right 

from the womb, girls around the world are devalued 

and less wanted than boys, which translates into a host 

of deprivations, shaming, and maltreatment at each 

stage of their development: infancy, childhood, 

adolescence, young adulthood, mid-life, and as seniors 

(World Bank 2022). 

Third, a key underpinning to this social 

stratification of patriarchy is the underlying belief of 

male honor and shame which persist in the traditional 

layer of society and continue to elevate men as the 

rightful godlike rulers and owners of society. Females 

are inferior, unclean, meant for subjugation, and to 

blame for evil in the world. This leaves a spiritual 

wound that needs deep healing from the roots up. 

“Honor” is a word that harkens back to ancient 

patriarchal codes of honor and shame that shaped the 

cultural and religious presuppositions that to this day 

live on in our collective heritage of symbols, stories, and 

our consciousness as a human society (Brown 2016). 

Honor has a proud ring to it, but it has an underbelly of 

shame and stigmatization that operate on many levels 

of society: intrapersonal, interpersonal, and structural 

(Uskul et al. 2023). Artifacts of this patriarchal honor 

and shame culture live on in our religious narratives and 

cultural practices, creating a long, enduring global 

legacy of structural stigmatization of females from 

cradle to grave.  

Civilization itself and all of our world’s great 

religious traditions were formed within the soil of 

patriarchal honor cultures so this is a big macro topic 

with so many layers that lie buried within many of our 

cherished traditions, taken-for-granted paradigms, and 

likewise within our own hearts and minds.  It is this 

honor gap (Jones and Misolo 2018) that we cannot 

ignore if we truly seek to advance the work of 

mainstreaming gender balanced organizations and 

societies. There has been some effort within Christian 

missiology to address the deeply rooted nature of 

honor-shame culturation around the world (Georges 

2017), but not much focus has been given to the gender 

dimension of its presence within our own tradition. The 

persistence of this pervasive and overarching honor gap 

between men and women also appears to be 

systemically undermining the good intentions and work 

toward gender equality mainstreaming within CRD and 

other sectors as well. Although more research needs to 

be done on this subject, anecdotally many women 

within CRD also report a similar experience of 

something “in the airwaves” undermining gender 

mainstreaming efforts even within organizations 

supportive of women in leadership.   

Finally, along with inherent social stratification 

rooted in the concepts of honor and shame, patriarchy 

is also underpinned and perpetuated by what has been 

called “system justification,”  

 

a social psychological propensity to defend and 

bolster the status quo, that is, to see it as good, 

fair, legitimate, and desirable. A consequence of 

this tendency is that existing social, economic, 



Christian Relief, Development, and Advocacy 6(2), Winter 2025  

Jones and Odhiambo, Destigmatizing Eve… 66 

and political arrangements tend to be preferred, 

and alternatives to the status quo are disparaged. 

System justification refers, therefore, to an 

inherently conservative tendency to defend and 

justify the status quo simply because it exists, 

sometimes even at the expense of individual and 

collective self-interest” (System Justification 

n.d.).   

 

Much can be written on this concept of systems 

justification, but for our purpose here it can be drawn 

on to provide additional insight into the forces in our 

collective psychology as a human species that resist 

change and thus maintain hierarchical caste-like social 

systems. As applied to patriarchy, because the historic 

stigmatization of females as inferior, unclean, and to 

blame for evil is so ancient and wrapped with venerable 

tradition, patriarchy is particularly stubborn and in 

many places around the globe still has the appearance 

of being “honorable” and rooted in some fixed, 

immovable reality established by God. 

In summary, patriarchy continues to persist across 

the globe despite many waves of movements over many 

centuries to reclaim a more mutual rapport of shared 

honor and dominion across the gender line. In fact, by 

many measures, the needle has gone backwards for 

women and girls’ basic security, dignity, and human 

rights over the course of the pandemic and as 

authoritarian movements and patriarchal forms of 

religion have been ascendant around the world over the 

past few decades (Cooper 2023). The work of gender 

equality mainstreaming will continue to hit regressive 

forces of resistance unless the underlying patriarchal 

myths and worldview are dislodged in our collective 

consciousness. As Colleen Samuel, founder of the Diva 

Shanti Christian Association and Trust in India, 

describes in Marriage and Life After in India: 

Addressing Myths that Enslave Girls “a girl will 

continue to be exploited as long as the myths that 

oppress her are permitted to remain unchallenged and 

unchanged" (1998, 72). 

This is particularly applicable to the many today 

who work within Christian relief and development 

efforts to stem the harsh humanitarian effects of 

patriarchal oppression around the world.  They often 

find themselves doing very sensitive work within their 

own religious traditions to establish a clear framework 

for working to mainstream gender balance, equality, 

and shared honor and dignity. This stigmatization that 

persists around the world continues to draw strength 

from Christianity as well as from the world’s other great 

patriarchal religious traditions. Consider the following 

example from western Kenya that analyzes the 

manifestations and repercussions of the structural 

stigmatization of widows, and how Christian religious 

traditions and actors both alleviate and perpetuate 

stigma against widows. 

 

Case Study:  The Stigmatization and Suffering 

of Widows in Rural Kenya  
In Kenya, much as in Africa and Asia, female 

widowhood is a young, gendered and a highly 

stigmatized social identity (The Loomba Foundation 

2015). Nearly half of widows in Kenya are younger than 

60 years old. For every one widower, there are at least 

eight widows in the country (KENPHIA 2018). Stigma, 

expressed through patriarchal norms, beliefs and 

practices coded in religious traditions, local culture and 

statutory laws favor and honor men over women during 

widowhood (The Loomba Foundation 2015; 

Federation of Women Lawyers - Kenya n.d.). When a 

husband dies, widows lose more than their husband. 

They lose their social status and become inferior, they 

lose relationships they had when their husband lived, 

and they also lose economic resources they enjoyed in 

their marriage. A threat of losing their children looms 

too should they make counter-cultural decisions like 

remarrying outside their deceased husband’s home 

(Potash 1986). At a challenging time in a woman's life 

when she can use as much support as can be offered, 

such support is often withdrawn.  

Just as “Eve” is blamed for sin, and hence death 

entering the world, widows in rural Kenya endure 

similar blame, shame, and stereotypes that devalue their 

humanity. When a husband dies, it is common for the 

widow to be blamed for his death, regardless of the 

cause of death. Labeled “husband killer,” the widow is 

also believed to acquire a spiritual impurity (the shadow 

of death) that threatens the survival of her children and 

the wellbeing of her community. She becomes a “witch” 

and a “bad omen.” She is held responsible for all 

misfortunes that befall her family and community, and 

is excluded from all forms of social events to keep “bad 

luck” and death at bay. The only recourse is to become 

purified through a sexual cleansing ritual. Sexual 

cleansing is a form of sexual exploitation that assumes 

women are unclean after the death of a husband, and 

that they can only be cleansed through sex with another 

man. Sexual cleansing is often forced upon widows, and 

performed without protection against sexually 

transmitted diseases. It is important to note that men 

who lose their spouses are neither accused of killing 

their wives nor carry a bad omen that needs cleansing 

(Ogweno 2010). 

Luo culture in western Kenya also restricts a 

widow’s right and freedom to remarry should she 

desire. In the traditional practice of ter in Luo, 

(presently referred to as widow inheritance), a 

husband’s brother or cousin, called jater, is required to 

“marry” a willing widow to keep the children and 

property of the deceased within the family (Perry et al. 



Christian Relief, Development, and Advocacy 6(2), Winter 2025  

Jones and Odhiambo, Destigmatizing Eve… 67 

2014). This practice preceded the advent of Christianity 

in Kenya in the colonial periods, but it is difficult to 

assess the directionality of the influences during 

colonialism. A similar practice is seen in the biblical 

stories of widows like Tamar (Genesis 38) and Ruth 

(Ruth 2) and has been called levirate marriage, levir 

referring to husband’s brother in Latin. In Kenya, ter 

has eroded to further objectify widows. The 

combination of HIV/AIDS epidemic and clan-based 

sexual networking in the era prior to condoms and 

antiretroviral therapy led to massive family deaths and 

the fear of widows as HIV carriers. Despite deceased 

husband’s brothers opting out of this practice due to 

fear of HIV, ter is still justified for women. Presently, 

non-relative joter (plural), demand payment for levirate 

services, require sex in levirate arrangements, and 

exploit resources at the widows’ disposal. These 

commercial joter have sexual relationships with 

multiple widows concurrently, increasing the risk of 

sexually transmitted illnesses during widowhood (Perry 

et al. 2014). In short, levirate and patrilineal custom 

have contributed to the current climate in Kenya in 

which widows are socially undesirable for marriage in 

Kenya. Widowers, on the other hand, know no such 

restrictions on their sexuality and remarriage desires.  

Despite progress in laws that promote gender 

equality in Kenya, statutory laws applicable during 

widowhood mimic patriarchal and religious norms that 

uphold male dominance, including economic 

dominance, and plunge widows into more poverty 

(Ogweno 2010; Federation of Women Lawyers, Kenya 

n.d.). Often, widowhood means the loss of a 

breadwinner and the expansion of a widow’s financial 

responsibilities. This situation is most desperate for 

women whose husbands prohibited their participation 

in the labor force, insisting they remain housewives. 

The desperation deepens when the same widows suffer 

property disinheritance, with their land, animals, and 

household effects grabbed by their in-laws who cling to 

patrilineal customs of inheritance and see the widows as 

responsible for the death of their son, and thus 

undeserving of their son’s or family’s wealth. Although 

Kenya’s constitution protects women’s rights to 

inheritance, the law does not guarantee a widow’s 

inheritance rights. Widows have user and not 

ownership rights of their matrimonial property. If 

widows remarry outside their deceased husband’s 

home, they lose all rights to the matrimonial property 

she had with the deceased husband. On the other hand, 

widowers have full ownership rights over matrimonial 

property (Ogweno 2010). Such “feminization of 

poverty” in widowhood contributes to the negative view 

of widows as “social burdens” and “beggars” to be 

avoided in the community.  

                                                        
1 These figures are taking from Nyanam’s 2023 baseline survey for all widows newly enrolling in their programs. 

Nyanam, a local non-profit in western Kenya, was 

created to address this stigmatization of widows and its 

negative impact on their spiritual, health, social, and 

economic well-being. It was established by a widow’s 

daughter, Jackie Odhiambo, who found her childhood 

experience of her widowed mother, grandmother and 

aunt as resilient, hardworking, and caring family 

leaders, to be irreconcilable with the social 

stigmatization of widows she witnessed as an adult. 

During a community borehole project that she and her 

team inspired, Jackie observed how widows who spoke 

their ideas were ignored or plagiarized; when they 

succeeded, someone else claimed the credit; and when 

something went wrong in the borehole project, widows 

were blamed. These negative patriarchal attitudes 

challenged her to secure a platform for women’s 

leadership in the community. Because widows were the 

least respected women in the community, Jackie and 

her team chose to center widows as leaders, hence 

founding Nyanam with a mission to prepare widows as 

leaders of community transformation. 

While many widows lean on their local churches 

for spiritual encouragement and social connection, the 

churches are a mixed blessing. The widows at Nyanam 

come from over 50 villages and in various church 

denominations, and 60% of 512 widows who 

completed Nyanam’s baseline survey noted a change in 

their relationship to faith and religion since widowhood, 

with 87% of those noting a change saying they became 

more spiritual or religious during widowhood.
1

 

Sometimes, this is a result of removed restrictions a 

husband may have imposed on his wife’s religious 

practices. Other times, this is a result of acute isolation 

and suffering that leave widows feeling they have only 

God to lean on. And still, only 1.5% of Nyanam widows 

mention receiving support beyond preaching and self-

sought individual counseling in the church. From 

Nyanam’s discussions with widows on these statistics, 

most churches either lack or neglect tailored 

programming for widows. Moreover, some churches 

still embrace and perpetuate the harmful norms, 

traditions, and narratives surrounding widowhood, with 

congregants alienating widows who do not conform to 

traditional rituals such as sexual cleansing, as they would 

be seen as defiling the house of God. Others seek to 

repress these traditions and cultural norms, but do so 

not by speaking out against them but by punishing 

widows who engage in them. In these churches, 

traditions such as levirate marriage are banned, and 

widows are denied holy communion if they enter into 

levirate relationship. Some churches also exploit 

religious texts like Isaiah 54:5 (“For your Maker is your 

husband”) and 1 Timothy 5:6 (“But the widow who 

lives for pleasure is dead even while she lives”) to 



Christian Relief, Development, and Advocacy 6(2), Winter 2025  

Jones and Odhiambo, Destigmatizing Eve… 68 

induce guilt among young widows who may still desire 

a husband. Broadly-speaking, the churches have 

discarded the biblical responsibility of caring for 

widows, with the majority not offering practical support, 

whether material or counseling to help widows 

overcome trauma from societal stigma.  

Nyanam’s ongoing research on stigmatization of 

widows (soon to be published) also shows how the 

stigmatization of widows extends to their children. In 

the extended family setup, the children of widows are 

either overworked or assigned jobs that other parents 

would not want their own children to do, like buying 

alcohol or cigarettes for adults. Whenever a group of 

children is involved in mischief, the widow’s child 

among them is scapegoated and blamed for the bad 

behavior in the group, whether or not they had a role in 

it. When gifts are distributed, those of lowest value are 

given to the children of widows. Widows’ children born 

out of ter (levirate arrangements) face even more 

stigmatization. Culturally, they are children of the 

deceased husbands, but legally they are children of 

jater. They face discrimination in both families and 

struggle with belonging, especially male children whose 

identity is linked to establishing a home and need an 

inheritance of land to do so. 

Stigma reduces social support for widows, 

encourages hostility toward and humiliation of them 

and their children, and entrenches loneliness that 

started with the loss of a husband, creating a significant 

toll on widows’ mental, physical, social, and economic 

health. Many widows internalize the stigma and develop 

feelings of inferiority, viewing themselves as “unable,” 

“empty,” “helpless,” “hopeless,” “outcasts,” 

“unworthy,” and “social burdens” (The Loomba 

Foundation 2015). They remain silent or comply with 

oppressive social impositions due to fear of further 

disdain or violence. In addition, this kind of stigma for 

female widowhood is a root cause of health and wealth 

inequalities, as well as social and sexual vulnerabilities 

women experience in widowhood. For example, 

practices of sexual cleansing and diminished 

opportunity to be in stable and healthy sexual 

relationships might explain why widows of reproductive 

age in Kenya have a HIV prevalence of 32%, the highest 

in any social group in the country, with no government 

program tailored to address HIV/AIDS in widowhood 

(Ministry of Health 2018). Widowed women also 

experience twice as much gender-based violence as 

married women (Kenya National Bureau of Statistics 

2023). Some avoid seeking healthcare especially for 

reproductive health issues due to fear of stigmatization. 

Kenya still has no social protection programs for 

widows, with the government assuming that if help is 

provided to the poor and the elderly, then it will reach 

widows too. This situation of widows in contexts such 

as rural Kenya contributed to the United Nation’s (UN) 

first resolution on addressing the situation of widows 

that passed in 2022 and now needs concerted action 

(Addressing the Situation of Widows 2022).   

 

Tools for Tackling the Structural 

Stigmatization of Women and Girls 

 
If I had an hour to solve a problem  

I’d spend 55 minutes thinking about the problem  

and 5 minutes thinking about solutions. 

(Popular saying, often attributed erroneously to Albert 

Einstein (quoteresearch 2014)) 

 
The stigmatization of widows in Kenya is just one 

manifestation of the persistence of the legacies of the 

ancient curse of Eve in our world today and shows the 

compounding nature of gender-based stigmatization 

that contains other “deeply discrediting attributes” that 

create multi-faceted “stains” on the person’s perceived 

character.  As briefly mentioned above, this due to a 

combination of local society’s historical traditions and 

the influence of Christianity-informed culture. These 

stigmas lead to compounding vulnerabilities and social 

alienation. Efforts within the Christian relief and 

development sector that seek to address the particular 

challenges widows and other women and girls face 

cannot make much progress without addressing the 

more deeply rooted and pervasive stigmatization of 

femaleness. The global dominance of Christianity 

around the world and its influence on the evolution of 

civilization in general and patriarchal gender norms in 

particular, suggest that there are deeper layers of work 

needed within the CRD sector.  The persistent “honor 

gap” needs to be “let out of the vents,” as it continues 

to stall and undermine efforts toward gender equality 

mainstreaming both within CRD organizations and the 

communities where they serve.  



Christian Relief, Development, and Advocacy 6(2), Winter 2025  

Jones and Odhiambo, Destigmatizing Eve… 69 

These deeper layers can be conveyed through the 

image of the iceberg, a simple and frequently used 

visual in the work of systems change to depict the forces 

and patterns that are less visible but need to be 

addressed to keep a problem from repeating over and 

over again (Leverage Points and the Iceberg Model, 

n.d.).  In this case, the work of systems change—to shift 

from a patriarchal to a gender equal social structure—

must involve addressing this deep, historic, persistent 

subconscious stigmatization. This builds on the legacies 

of the continual work of (re)interpretation of Scripture 

which many women (and men) over the centuries have 

engaged in as a source of liberation and equality for 

women in the context of misogyny.  

Many working within CRD have been formed 

within the very narratives, beliefs, and theological 

frameworks surrounding the negative characterization 

of Eve. As contemporary people of faith whose 

religious imaginations in particular have been so shaped 

by symbols, thought patterns, beliefs, and narratives 

developed within the soil of our ancient patriarchal faith 

traditions, we live within the logic and mythology of the 

patriarchal stigma. It is often easier to work on the 

humanitarian level to mitigate the symptoms of the 

patriarchal stigma than to work to address the ways our 

own faith traditions create such problems. Often our 

traditions have been and continue to be complicit in 

creating and reproducing this root patriarchal 

stigmatization that creates such a harmful honor gap 

between men and women.  

The following five specific tools may help Christian 

relief and development organizations tackle this 

problem as they progress in becoming “active restorers 

of shalom” as described in the Principles for Gender 

Equality for Development Organizations (Wheaton 

Network Initiative n.d.). 

 
Naming and Reversing the Shaming: The first tool for 

addressing the ongoing stigmatization of women is to 

bring that stigmatization to the forefront and tackle it 

head-on in order to reverse it. The mythology of the 

“curse of Eve” is a reality in the water that Christian 

relief and development organizations swim in 

(Ritenbaugh 1997a).  There are three ways to name and 

then engage in reversing this shaming.   

The first way of tackling this misguided mythology 

is to use the quotes mentioned previously from the 

Church Fathers and present-day theologians such as 

Ritenbaugh (1997a) to facilitate reflections on how the 

“curse of Eve” is still playing out in and around the work 

of CRD in terms of the culture of patriarchal honor and 

shame that persists. Two key questions can be asked as 

prompts along with a facilitated exercise that follows 

them: 

1. In your work and personal life, where have you 

encountered this very ancient stigmatization of 

females (“curse of Eve”) described above and its 

myriad ugly contemporary consequences? Start 

with the beginning of the life cycle and move 

through each stage of female human development 

and have people reflect on where they see 

remnants of this culture of patriarchal honor that 

has devalued and shamed the female body and 

personhood. Where do they see any remnants of 

the double standard of male honor and female 

shame/blame alive and well in various traditional 

practices, beliefs, and norms? What are some 

examples still happening today where women are 

easily blamed and scapegoated for bad things that 

happen? Don’t take too long to discuss each 

example, just create a list and carry this forward 

into a subsequent conversation where you will 

delve in more deeply to explore the role of religion 

in both perpetuating this ancient “curse of Eve” 

and also its potential to dispel and transform this. 

If you need some “inspiration,” have people read 

“Son Preference” (n.d.) and “What is Period 

Stigma” (Resnick 2021) to see how stigmatization 

starts right from birth and surrounds a girl’s passage 

through puberty.  

 

2. Where, in subtle and blatant ways, do you see an 

“honor gap” between women and men in your own 

place of worship and/or in your own CRD 

organization? Is there something in the air that 

feels like it needs to be let out of the vents? 

 

Second, this stigmatization can also be named and 

reversed by encouraging the reinterpretation of the 

ancient creation story.  Drawing on curiosity and lament 

https://www.academyforchange.org/2019/12/07/leverage-points-iceberg-model-economic-development/


Christian Relief, Development, and Advocacy 6(2), Winter 2025  

Jones and Odhiambo, Destigmatizing Eve… 70 

(two additional tools detailed below) at how our origin 

story has been used over the centuries to shame, blame, 

and degrade the humanity of women, should lead to a 

posture of intentional care in how to tell stories from 

the Bible. As thoughtful Christians who know the harm 

that misuse of the Bible has done over the course of 

church history, we should be open to rethinking our 

own taken-for-granted presumptions about the meaning 

and details of this ancient story. Part of this process is 

embracing the story of Adam and Eve for what it is: an 

ancient Hebrew “origin story” that leads us to ponder 

the divine mysteries of our origins as a human species. 

A helpful resource in rereading and reinterpreting Eve 

is to draw from Jewish ways of interpreting the Hebrew 

text that involve four levels of approaching the text to 

make room for the symbolic and esoteric meaning. 

These are: 1) Peshat (ט שָׁ  meaning plain or simple. It :(פְּ

is used for the most obvious and simple meaning of a 

text; 2) Remez (ֶרֶמז): meaning hints. It is used for the 

allegoric (hidden or symbolic) meaning beyond the 

literal sense; 3) Derash (  ׁ ַרשדְְּּ ): meaning inquire or 

seek. It is used for the comparative (midrashic) 

meaning, looking at similar occurrences of a word. 4) 

Sod (ֹודס): meaning secret or mystery. It is used for the 

esoteric and mystical meaning, as often used in the 

Kabbalah (jonathan33m4 2012).  

The third way to engage in reversing the shaming 

that comes from the stigmatization of Eve and its 

legacies is to honor Eve as the “Mother of all Living,” a 

title that Eve bore before she was shamed, framed, and 

blamed. As Crispe (2006) describes in “Chavah: 

Mother of All Life,” “Chavah” is a derivative of the 

Hebrew word chayah, meaning “living one.” Chavah 

embodies both the essence of life itself and the creative 

ability to grant that life to others. The idea of “Mother 

of all Living” expresses not only the ability to physically 

give birth, but also to create, nourish, and enhance all 

facets of life. This is the ability of a mother—to take 

something from the state of potential, develop it, and 

bring it to actualization through her creative abilities. 

Eve, then, among many other things, represents the 

feminine creative spirit which is ever birthing all of life 

into being. She embodies the female face of God, past, 

present, and future in all the daughters of Eve who have 

been mothering life in all its forms. Like all stigmas, this 

man-made stigma reflects more about the group who 

created the stigma than the stigmatized group. 

Thankfully, this man-made curse has never been able 

to take away Eve’s intrinsic glory and dominion. It 

shines from within each baby girl born each day and 

reminds us of who we truly are. Eve’s intrinsic glory as 

the “Mother of all Living” shines within all of the ways 

that women mother one another and ourselves to be 

and become who we truly are. And though we have 

largely made God into the image of men and forgotten 

the womb who bore us, as it says in Isaiah 49:14, 

thankfully the mothering side of God has not forgotten 

us: “Can a mother forget her infant, and be without 

tenderness for the child of her womb? Even should she 

forget, I will never forget you.” The best way to lift a 

stigma is to bow in honor to the stigmatized group and 

see the divinity she has always possessed as an image-

bearer of God.  

 

Curiosity: The second tool for tackling stigmatization is 

that of encouraging curiosity. There is so much about 

the version of this ancient creation narrative of Adam 

and Eve that should prompt a basic sense of curiosity. 

Because of the deep stigma that this story has been 

complicit in sanctioning and reinforcing, Christians 

should be open to a posture of looking again at all the 

inherited presumptions of what this story means. The 

first step in enlisting curiosity as a tool in one’s toolbox 

within CRD is to create spaces for open and safe 

dialogue around underlying religious and cultural 

presumptions that operate within and around the work 

of the organization or community, in particular related 

to gender norms and conventions. It is not easy to 

criticize sacred stories and traditions, but to move 

forward as a human family we must be willing to look at 

the stories and interpretations we receive from the past 

and continue to pass down. Every culture and religion 

has patriarchal sacred cows that function very similarly 

to the framing, shaming, and scapegoating of Eve. This 

is hard but necessary work if we truly want to lift the 

heavy intergenerational stigma that women and girls still 

experience around the world. Cultivating a posture of 

curiosity around holy texts like the Bible and such an 

ancient, foundational story as the Genesis creation 

account might seem intimidating or too academic for 

the work of CRD, but finding ways to achieve this is 

important. 

 

Deep Listening: The third tool for tackling the 

stigmatization of Eve and of women in general is deep 

listening, especially through the approach of 

storytelling. Destigmatizing Eve requires that we listen 

to unvarnished stories of stigmatized women who are 

brave enough to share the horrors they have endured at 

the risk of being restigmatized. By valuing and centering 

personal stories, we use our presence to create sacred 

spaces where women can be who they truly are.  

Nyanam Widows Rising, for example, has made oral 

storytelling an integral part of its activities, creating times 

and moments throughout its work when widows can 

share their personal stories as part of a healing process. 

CRD organizations can likewise incorporate 

storytelling. Sometimes deep listening requires that we 

ask no questions, but instead simply receive and carry 

the story along with the sharer. Our attentive and 

compassionate presence is its own intervention, and 

deep listening is love.   



Christian Relief, Development, and Advocacy 6(2), Winter 2025  

Jones and Odhiambo, Destigmatizing Eve… 71 

Lament: The fourth key tool for tackling the 

stigmatization of women is that of encouraging 

openness to and the practice of lament. In the sacred 

space of listening, our hearts open into a posture of 

lament and we find a deeper spiritual unity that is 

stronger than any stain or curse we humans have 

inflicted on one another. Lament not only connects our 

hearts with an individual girl or woman who has been 

stigmatized, it connects us with the past and the future. 

Our hearts are wiser and more powerful than we know. 

CRD organizations can embrace lament, especially in 

moments of tragedy, to encourage full expression of not 

only grief but also anger at subjugation of women. In a 

moment of shared lament, there is deep healing beyond 

words that can liberate both the hearer and the sharer 

of a story. Insights on how to respond to the injustice 

can emerge.  

 
Contemplation: The fifth and final tool for tackling the 

stigmatization of women is related to the practice of 

lament – contemplation which refers to the wordless 

prayer of the heart. This knowing of the heart unites us 

with our shared humanity and the timeless river of life 

which is ever healing and renewing all things. Centering 

our faith traditions in this stream of consciousness—the 

real ground of faith deeper than all of the creeds and 

tomes of theology which have attributed this curse of 

Eve to God—is a pathway of restorative prayer to 

participate in the deep healing of our world’s gender 

wounds and connect in silence with what the Spirit of 

true liberation which is our shared birthright as a human 

family. CRD organizations interested in tapping more 

into this contemplative stream of knowing can first of all 

acknowledge that this domain of consciousness exists, 

is part of our native endowment as human beings, and 

is a lost current we can seek to reclaim within our own 

faith traditions. As a CRD organization, there are many 

ways you can weave in moments of contemplation into 

the rhythm of your organization, including: periodic 

guided, silent prayer which invite a shift into the love 

that exists at the center of one’s being; guided seasonal 

retreats in the more contemplative seasons of the 

church calendar (Advent and Lent) including time to 

get outside to commune with the presence of the 

Divine in the beauty of creation; and reading books 

together to support people to dig a little bit deeper into 

the rich contemplative tradition of Wisdom found 

within the Bible and many branches within Christianity. 

It can be very hard to become more aware of how our 

own cherished faith tradition has for so many centuries 

created and used its theology and storytelling platform 

to sanction patriarchal social structures in this shaming 

and stigmatizing way. Finding a deeper, liberating 

current of faith within oneself and within one’s own 

tradition can be incredibly grounding as one continues 

the journey of awareness to shed so many of the layers 

that continue to oppress and stigmatize women and 

girls. If you are interested in reclaiming this 

contemplative current of faith as an individual or within 

your organization, there are so many resources to draw 

from too numerous to list here, some of which are the 

following: 

• The Center for Action and Contemplation,  

• The Transforming Center,  

• Leaderships Transformations, Inc.,  

• PAX Center for Christian Spiritual Formation,  

• Lastly, please listen to this short animated 

video Understanding Our History of Patriarchy: 

What’s faith got to do with it? created by Girl Child 

Long Walk, which has been translated into 13 

languages to invite people of faith to go on this 

journey to reclaim the emancipatory current of faith 

from within our patriarchal religious traditions. 

 

Conclusion 
As a human family, our well-being on this planet is 

tied to reclaiming the wisdom and honor of the female 

half of the human family. Naming this oldest 

curse/stigma for what it truly is—the oldest fake news in 

history books—is a needed step towards restoring 

balance between the masculine and feminine in our 

world and liberating ourselves from the ancient roots of 

this oldest oppression. Naming it will not, once and for 

all, let the stigma out of the windows and vents; but by 

calling it a stigma, not just a humanitarian problem, it 

will disarm it of some of the intergenerational holding 

power it still has on our collective psyche. 

Together in so many different types of work, 

Christian relief and development organizations can do 

what no other sector working for gender equality can 

do: bravely and sensitively use its platform to name and 

reverse the curse that patriarchy (not God) inflicted on 

the female half of the human family. This is not easy 

work because there are so many patriarchal sacred cows 

we need to be willing to look at and let go of to 

transform into something else. We like to think of our 

beliefs and doctrines as set and fixed but, like everything 

in life, these two were created by humans (in many 

iterations over the course of history) and so can be 

recreated by humans to live up to our highest and best 

timeless values. With one foot in the pond of 

patriarchal theology and the other in justice, relief, and 

development work, CRD is well-situated for this work 

of deep listening and healing to reclaim something 

precious that has been lost and find tangible and 

practical ways to honor what has been stigmatized.  

 

May it be so. 

 

 

 

https://cac.org/
https://transformingcenter.org/
https://www.leadershiptransformations.org/
https://www.paxcenter.org/
https://youtu.be/32_esnVr89g
https://youtu.be/32_esnVr89g
https://girlchildlongwalk.org/
https://girlchildlongwalk.org/


Christian Relief, Development, and Advocacy 6(2), Winter 2025  

Jones and Odhiambo, Destigmatizing Eve… 72 

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“Women Were Considered Ritually Unclean.” 

www.womenpriests.org.  

https://womenpriests.org/tradition/unclean-

women-were-considered-ritually-unclean/  

World Bank. 2022 (October 1). Violence Against 

Women and Girls – What the Data Tell Us. 

https://genderdata.worldbank.org/data-

stories/overview-of-gender-based-violence/ 

Zurlo, Gina A., Todd M. Johnson, and Peter F. 

Crossing. 2024. "World Christianity 2024: 

Fragmentation and Unity."  International Bulletin 

of Mission Research 48 (1): 43–54. doi: 

10.1177/23969393231201817. 
 

 
 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Emily Nielsen Jones is Founding Partner/ Trustee, 

Imago Dei Fund & Girl Child Long Walk 

 

Author email: emilynj@imagodeifund.org 

 

Jackline A. Odhiambo is the Founder & Executive 

Director at Nyanam Widows Rising in Kenya. She 

has an MSc in Public Health and is a Ph.D. Fellow 

in Sustainable Development for Health at 

University of California San Francisco and Maseno 

University. 
 

Author email: jackline.odhiambo@nyanam.org 
 

http://www.jstor.org/stable/4030366
https://womenpriests.org/tradition/unclean-women-were-considered-ritually-unclean/
https://womenpriests.org/tradition/unclean-women-were-considered-ritually-unclean/
https://genderdata.worldbank.org/data-stories/overview-of-gender-based-violence/
https://genderdata.worldbank.org/data-stories/overview-of-gender-based-violence/
https://imagodeifund.org/
https://girlchildlongwalk.org/
mailto:emilynj@imagodeifund.org
https://www.nyanam.org/
mailto:jackline.odhiambo@nyanam.org