FAQs

Ordained women face the most obvious and direct discrimination. Doctoral Researcher at the University of Birmingham, Sarah Schofield, has conducted recent research (comprising interviews with a range of ordained women in the Church of England), that evidences the discrimination that ordained women experience and its impact.  One of her interviewees says, ‘To be in an institution which has said that it is alright for people to hold office who have the view that women are not able to be priests is for me to be in an institution which appears completely half-hearted in its support for my ministry and for the ministry of other women.’ Bishop Rose Hudson-Wilkin has spoken of the daily humiliation that the arrangements bring. Being expected to attend events where you are not allowed to preach or preside over communion and yet are expected to smile and say this is acceptable.

Rev Jeremy Clines, Chaplain at Sheffield University, speaks about the moral injury that is caused to ordained women when they are expected to be silent about the injustice that they experience and yet represent a Church that is called to proclaim a gospel of justice for all people.

Ordained women are forced to keep their concerns and experiences of discrimination to themselves. To speak out means that they are labelled as difficult and will preclude them getting promotions in the Church. I myself, for example, have been told that I am blacklisted from getting any form of promotion because I have spoken out publicly about discrimination against women in the Church. I know Deans of Women’s ministry who have been advised to resign their membership of WATCH if they want to continue in their positions. All this means that not only are women experiencing costly discrimination and diminishment, but also they are coerced into silence about this.

The discrimination that ordained women experience means that there are certain parishes where they cannot apply for posts. And, in the case of bishops, there are parishes for whom female bishops need to make arrangements for extended oversight by an acceptable male bishop.

But, perhaps more importantly, this institutional discrimination legitimises all kinds of sexism. And although we have a good percentage of priests and bishops who are now female, the top jobs are still largely given to men. Statistics show that, as a female priest, you are more likely to be serving in rural ministry looking after seven or more parishes with no support, while male priests occupy almost all of the senior posts at large city churches with big staff teams. Furthermore, about 25% of bishops are now female, but only eight out of 42 Diocesan Bishops are female. This is because the system of appointment through the CNC is skewed against female candidates who effectively need to get 10 out of 10 possible votes rather than 10 out of 14.  As a result, only three in the last thirteen appointments of Diocesans have been women.

Most lay women and men are unaware of the ongoing discrimination against women in the Church. There is a deliberate policy of covering up and disguising the current arrangements. Despite WATCH, the SCM and others calling for transparency, almost nothing has been done to make it easy for lay people to see whether their church puts any limits on women’s ministries. And this is deliberate because churches who limit women’s ministries know that to explain this clearly would be problematic from a missional perspective. So, either nothing is said or wording is cloaked in jargon so that people cannot understand it. When people do find out that their church has a policy of limiting women’s ministries (usually when a vacancy arises), they are frequently upset about this.  They may feel betrayed and almost defrauded, especially if they have been members of the church for a long time and have given sacrificially with their own ministries and their money.

A lay woman may also be in a church which limits women’s ministry and find that, if she has a vocation to ordained ministry, then this is either unrecognised or discouraged. All priests are supposed to pass on potential female candidates for ordination to other priests to help them in the discernment process, if they cannot themselves. Nonetheless, this does not always happen, and sometimes a woman does not recognise her calling herself when she sees no women leading, preaching or presiding in the church she attends.

As an ADO myself in recent years, I have observed how some vicars will give men in their congregations, who are discerning a calling, opportunities like preaching or leading a small group to help them explore their calling.  But deny the same opportunities to women who have also told them they are discerning a calling. All this makes it harder for a woman to get a true sense of whether she is being called to ministry or not.

Women have been treated as second-class in the Church for many, many years and have been constrained to lowly positions. Their gifts have often not been recognised. Continuing with arrangements that still put women in a special category where they may or may not be accepted and their gifts may or may not be fully received by the Church, is to continue to diminish women who are equally made in the image of God as men are. Dr Sharon Jagger, senior lecturer in religion at York St John University, has done some recent research with lay women in the Church of England which she has published in a report called Rock the Boat and gives evidence of the impact of discrimination on lay women in the Church today.

Our children and young people are being taught, in some churches, theology that is frankly bad and potentially harmful. There is a clear and proven correlation between understandings of male privilege and violence against women and girls. (See almost anything written by Kevin Giles on this subject.) 

I was in a Church of England school last year and taking a class of sixth formers and one young man put up his hand and said that his church taught that women need to be under the authority of men.  This was a difficult thing to hear with half the class being 16-year-old girls. I was personally, of course, in a position to rebut the interpretations of scripture that he had been taught, but they were not. One girl rather meekly said, but isn’t it Eve’s fault as she ate the apple first?

We have to take seriously the theology that our children are being taught. Just because we call something theology does not make it good. Some theology is bad. With hindsight, we can easily look at the theologies that underpinned apartheid in South Africa or the Ku Klux Klan in the US and say this was bad theology – but we need to recognise it in our own midst. And I (and many practical theologians like Leah Robinson, for example) would say that a clear red flag when it comes to discerning if theology is good or bad is whether it actually harms people.

There is a lot of domestic violence in our culture and most of it is directed at women and girls and is often justified by an understanding that women need to do what men tell them. I would have liked to have said to the young people in that classroom that, in the Church of England, we treat women and men equally and we believe that this is what Christ calls to do. Full stop. Sadly, I was unable to do this.  I could not even say that the Church is working towards greater gender justice because it isn’t. We have (thankfully) a Church of England Head of Racial Justice but no Head of Gender Justice.

A lay woman may also be in a church which limits women’s ministry and find that, if she has a vocation to ordained ministry, then this is either unrecognised or discouraged. All priests are supposed to pass on potential female candidates for ordination to other priests to help them in the discernment process, if they cannot themselves. Nonetheless, this does not always happen, and sometimes a woman does not recognise her calling herself when she sees no women leading, preaching or presiding in the church she attends.

As an ADO myself in recent years, I have observed how some vicars will give men in their congregations, who are discerning a calling, opportunities like preaching or leading a small group to help them explore their calling.  But deny the same opportunities to women who have also told them they are discerning a calling. All this makes it harder for a woman to get a true sense of whether she is being called to ministry or not.

Women have been treated as second-class in the Church for many, many years and have been constrained to lowly positions. Their gifts have often not been recognised. Continuing with arrangements that still put women in a special category where they may or may not be accepted and their gifts may or may not be fully received by the Church, is to continue to diminish women who are equally made in the image of God as men are. Dr Sharon Jagger, senior lecturer in religion at York St John University, has done some recent research with lay women in the Church of England which she has published in a report called Rock the Boat and gives evidence of the impact of discrimination on lay women in the Church today.

The injustice and violence that women and girls experience around our world is caused, perpetuated and justified, in many instances, by an understanding that women should do what men tell them to do and, if they don’t, they should be punished.  The practices of these oppressive cultures are often underpinned and justified by theology – whether Christian, Muslim or of other faiths. Correcting this bad theology is really important. And it is hard for us to do this with any authenticity if we ourselves, as a Church, still discriminate against women.I was in a Church of England school last year and taking a class of sixth formers and one young man put up his hand and said that his church taught that women need to be under the authority of men.  This was a difficult thing to hear with half the class being 16-year-old girls. I was personally, of course, in a position to rebut the interpretations of scripture that he had been taught, but they were not. One girl rather meekly said, but isn’t it Eve’s fault as she ate the apple first?

We have to take seriously the theology that our children are being taught. Just because we call something theology does not make it good. Some theology is bad. With hindsight, we can easily look at the theologies that underpinned apartheid in South Africa or the Ku Klux Klan in the US and say this was bad theology – but we need to recognise it in our own midst. And I (and many practical theologians like Leah Robinson, for example) would say that a clear red flag when it comes to discerning if theology is good or bad is whether it actually harms people.

There is a lot of domestic violence in our culture and most of it is directed at women and girls and is often justified by an understanding that women need to do what men tell them. I would have liked to have said to the young people in that classroom that, in the Church of England, we treat women and men equally and we believe that this is what Christ calls to do. Full stop. Sadly, I was unable to do this.  I could not even say that the Church is working towards greater gender justice because it isn’t. We have (thankfully) a Church of England Head of Racial Justice but no Head of Gender Justice.

A lay woman may also be in a church which limits women’s ministry and find that, if she has a vocation to ordained ministry, then this is either unrecognised or discouraged. All priests are supposed to pass on potential female candidates for ordination to other priests to help them in the discernment process, if they cannot themselves. Nonetheless, this does not always happen, and sometimes a woman does not recognise her calling herself when she sees no women leading, preaching or presiding in the church she attends.

As an ADO myself in recent years, I have observed how some vicars will give men in their congregations, who are discerning a calling, opportunities like preaching or leading a small group to help them explore their calling.  But deny the same opportunities to women who have also told them they are discerning a calling. All this makes it harder for a woman to get a true sense of whether she is being called to ministry or not.

Women have been treated as second-class in the Church for many, many years and have been constrained to lowly positions. Their gifts have often not been recognised. Continuing with arrangements that still put women in a special category where they may or may not be accepted and their gifts may or may not be fully received by the Church, is to continue to diminish women who are equally made in the image of God as men are. Dr Sharon Jagger, senior lecturer in religion at York St John University, has done some recent research with lay women in the Church of England which she has published in a report called Rock the Boat and gives evidence of the impact of discrimination on lay women in the Church today.