Dr. Kendra Irons has co-authored a book on Christian feminism in the hope that she can inspire women to be all they can.

Irons is working with Dr. Melanie Springer Mock of George Fox University. They have been writing together for more than two years on a blog titled "Ain't I a Woman." They started the blog to examine Christian popular culture and how these artifacts are used to essentially keep women in a specific box.

The book, If Eve Only Knew: Freeing Yourself from Biblical Womanhood and Becoming All God Means for you to Be is published by Chalice Press.

The book is essentially geared toward women attending Christian colleges such as Liberty University. Through Irons' extensive research and studies, she found that women in Chrisitan colleges start out with higher self esteem, and by the time they graduate, they have much lower self-esteem.

"What we have come to believe is that it is this kind of Christian popular culture that essentially provides these messges to women that tell them: on the one hand God loves them, and on the other hand they are sinful like Eve," said Irons. "They're not as bright as their male peers and they should be learders in only certain places. There are mixed messges that women in particular get."

Irons and Mock seek to provide a more accurate and Bibilical understanding of the roles women play within Christianity by targeting subjects such as purity, culture and the Proverbs 31 woman who is an example of virtue, responsibility and good sense.

The purpose of Irons' book is to provide an alternative and change the stigmas associated with Christian women by targeting the women at Christian colleges.

"In If Eve Only Knew, we critique the messages about gender that are ubiquitous in evangelical Christian popular culture," said Irons. "These messages are often labeled 'biblical' or 'godly,' but are based more on cultural sterotype than on anything the Bible maight say."