Women presented as INFERIOR at the very beginning of Bible?

“And I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your offspring and hers; he will crush your head, and you will strike his heel. To the woman he said, “I will greatly increase your pains in childbearing; with pain you will give birth to children. Your desire will be for your husband, and he will rule over you.” (Genesis 3:15-16)

We see in the above that women are punished with a three-fold curse. Firstly, she is cursed with the pains of child birth. Secondly, she is cursed with having her desire for her husband and thirdly, she is cursed with bing RULED by the husband. The word rule here is mashal which means ‘to have dominion over’. 

It’s the same word found in Judges 8:22 where Gideon is given rule over Israel. Further more, if you read the passage you will see that the punishment for women is mentioned first and then only the man’s. And if you look critically you will be able to notice that the punishments are not even out. In fact, for the man instead of him getting cursed, the ground gets it! Genesis 3:17 says, “cursed is the ground because of you(Adam/man)”. What did the ground do to deserve getting cursed for Adam’s fault?

In the Bible the woman is singled out and more blame is given to her. This is seen in verse 12 of Genesis 3 where Adam makes Eve as a scapegoat, “And the man said, the woman whom You gave to be with me, she gave me of the tree, and I did eat.” Here we see that Adam does not own up to his mistake according to Genesis, but instead lays the blame on Eve. But, even more than that he actually BLAMED God when he said, “whom YOU GAVE to be with me”.

Yet, even then the woman gets punished more than the man as shown in Genesis 3:16, “To the woman He said, “I will greatly multiply Your pain in childbirth, In pain you will bring forth children; Yet your desire will be for your husband, And he will rule over you.”

In fact, this singling Eve, the mother of women out as the culprit is emphasised in the New Testament in Timothy 2:14-15,

“And it was not Adam who was deceived, but the woman being deceived, fell into transgression.”