About the Course

Whether to lean in or opt out, enter the workforce or work in the home, win the bread or care for the kids—or even to have kids or not—American women are under immense pressure. In a culture that places unprecedented, unrelenting, and unrealistic expectations on women, and then labels them into various “camps,” how can women discern the lives God intends for them?

In this course, Kate Harris, Executive Director of the Washington Institute for Faith, Vocation, and Culture and author of Wonder Women: Navigating the Challenges of Career, Motherhood and Identity, addresses three unique challenges facing women—encampment, embodiment, and expectation—and then draws on the resources of Christian faith to open up vistas from which women can fulfill their vocations and recover their true identities.

What You'll Learn

  • How can we combat our culture’s tendency to restrict a woman’s identity to her “camp”?
  • How can a comprehensive vision of vocation lead to a life free from fear and fantasy?
  • What are the unique challenges posed by female embodiment and the capacity to bear children?
  • How can we learn to see our limitations as a good gift from God?
  • What does the incarnation of God in Jesus Christ teach us about freedom from a culture of business and achievement?

Course curriculum

  • 1

    Women Under Pressure

    • The Lay of the Land

    • Encampment

    • Helen Hayes

    • Embodiment

    • Expectation

    • Panel Discussion
  • 2

    A Comprehensive Calling

    • Vocation is a Complex Term

    • A Richer Vocabulary

    • The Language of Dignity
  • 3

    A Life of Freedom

    • Limited by Our Bodies

    • Constraint

    • The Slow Way of Jesus

    • Consent to Finitude

    • The Path of Pilgrimage

About the Instructor

Executive Director, Washington Institute for Faith, Vocation, and Culture

Kate Harris

Kate serves as Executive Director at The Washington Institute for Faith, Vocation, and Culture. A native of Colorado, Kate moved to Washington in 2002 and spent several years working for Senate leadership on Capitol Hill before helping to found the Wedgewood Circle, an angel investment network to fund art that lifts up the good, true and beautiful. She recently published Wonder Woman: Navigating the Challenges of Motherhood, Career, and Identity with Zondervan as part of the Barna Frames series. She is married to a very good man and mother to their four young children.