Is God a Misogynist?

God does not ultimately favor men over women, nor does he consider them to be inferior to men. At times in history, however, God has allowed his people to perpetuate rather paternalistic social structures. However, this imbalance did not exist in the original creation (prior to the sin of Adam and Eve), nor will it exist in heaven, nor in the new heavens and new earth. While God did grant men greater access to some of his covenant blessings in the Old Testament, this is not the case in the New Testament. In the Old Testament, males had advantages over females, Jews had advantages over Gentiles, and freemen had advantages over slaves. When Jesus (a free male Jew) came, however, he inherited all the covenant blessings for himself -- we get none on our own (and even salvation is a covenant blessing). When we have faith in Christ, he shares his blessings with us -- regardless of our gender, race or status -- so that no one has any advantage over anyone else when he/she is "in Christ" (a believer in Christ, united to him by faith) [see for example Gal. 3:25-29]. There are some passages that on the surface seem to imply that men still have advantages over women, but most of these do not really teach this -- this is one reason it is very important to understand things like historical context when we read the Bible.