Reflections on Dismantling Gender Stereotypes and Expanding Women's Roles in the Church - Current Status and Future of Young Women in the Seventh-day Adventist Church in South Korea -

This paper examines the current status of female youth in the Seventh- day Adventist Church in South Korea in an attempt to dismantle gender stereotypes and make cognitive and practical suggestions for expanding the role of women in the church. Women's positions and roles in the church are limited and restricted in comparison to men's, which is attributed to gender-discriminatory biblical interpretations and traditional, patriarchal church culture. Meanwhile, in modern society, women's lives have diversified as traditional families have broken down, new family forms have emerged, and the number of “working women” has increased, and conservative churches have been unable to embrace them. In order to address these gender discriminatory issues and expand the role of women, we made recommendations from both cognitive and practical perspectives. First, in the cognitive aspect, we reaffirmed that men and women are equal and have equal value, and proposed to distribute positions and roles according to individual characteristics and strengths rather than gender, without limiting the roles of men and women. In terms of practical measures, she suggested expanding women's leadership, establishing measures to collect the opinions of women and youth, mentoring programs for women, women's leadership and gender equality education, and cell meetings.