“”Headship.”" It sounds like a made-up word, but to many in Fundamentalist or Evangelical Christian churches, it is a very serious matter, and it controls women to a degree most Americans think exists only in Saudi Arabia and other such places. “”Headship”" means that a male is and always must be the head of household, and no woman is ever to have freedom and agency entirely of her own. A daughter is subject to the headship of her father until the day the father hands her over, lock, stock and virginity, to a husband, who then becomes that woman’s head.
photo credit: Gaga M13
Suppose a girl growing up in a Fundamentalist family doesn’t want to marry young, or at all? These movements allow no room for that. In the Quiverfull movement, for one odious example, a woman is expected to be more or less perpetually pregnant. Each child is an “”arrow”" in the “”quiver”" of soldiers of Christ, and a woman’s job – her only job – is to produce a full quiver of arrows under her husband’s (you guessed it) headship. Never mind that perpetual pregnancy takes an enormous toll on a woman’s body. Never mind that, for many women, pregnancy is a plague of nausea and weakness. Never mind that raising a lot of small children can be exhausting. The church wants it, and the woman’s health and desire don’t factor into the picture.
Many women find the strength to walk away from these patriarchal movements, and many websites have sprung up where such women can find fellowship and support. They can learn to improve their education, express themselves artistically, select their own clothing, and go on dates without an authority figure allowing or disallowing it: In other words, to run their own lives, under no one’s headship but their own.
