Augustine's Views on Women

Women
St Augustine viewed women as useful only in as far as that they could bear children, even though he acknowledged, as is stated in Genesis, that both men and women were created in the image of God. He viewed them as inferior companionship and as physically lesser, but sees their spirituality as being equal. Augustine tackles the contradiction raised in Corinthians 11:7 by the apostle Paul, who states that “man ought not cover his head, since he is in the image and glory of God. But the woman is the glory of man.”, which is in direct contradiction with what is proclaimed in Genesis. Augustine does by so by saying that only when women and men are united, do they form an incomplete image of God and thereby he skirts having to condemn the status quo. He does however say that when the dead are resurrected (City of God XXII) they will retain their female and male sexual identities, but women will no longer be subordinate to men, perhaps because they will no longer have their lesser womanly bodies that Augustine seems so uncomfortable with.