Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, May 7, 1995 TAG: 9505100027
SECTION: HORIZON PAGE: D-6 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: DAVID BRIGGS ASSOCIATED PRESS
DATELINE: HARTFORD, CONN. LENGTH: Long
More than two decades after women started stepping into pulpits in significant numbers, they are encountering a stained-glass ceiling, a barrier that's keeping the ministry far behind other professions in workplace equality.
A study by Hartford Seminary finds that the percentage of female clergy has actually declined over eight years in denominations once at the forefront of women's ordination, such as the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.), the United Methodist Church and the Episcopal Church.
In their survey of 4,900 clergy in 16 Protestant denominations, the most comprehensive ever done on women in ministry, researchers found clergymen in general had stayed close to the career path they envisioned for themselves in seminaries.
Women with the same goals, however, had to settle for lower-paying positions as assistants. Women also averaged $5,000 less in annual salary and benefits than men with similar work experience.
When men and women ordained at the same time were asked about their present jobs, 22 percent of men were senior pastors of larger churches, compared with 6 percent of women, according to the study released to The Associated Press.
``Sexism is behind the fact ... the church won't accept women as senior pastors,'' said Adair Lummis, one of the study's authors. ``Law and medicine are subject to secular laws, about hiring, about affirmative action.''
Women are still banned from pastoral positions in some religions, such as Roman Catholicism and Orthodox Judaism. But various Protestant churches have permitted female clergy for more than a century, and women founded others, such as the Christian Science Church and the International Church of the Foursquare Gospel.
It was not until the 1970s that women, powered by the feminist and civil rights movements, began donning religious robes in large numbers, as they also forged into other previously off-limits territory such as law and the military.
But the significant gains made by women in other professions have not been matched in the nation's churches, the study finds. While women now account for 25 percent of lawyers and 21 percent of doctors, only 11 percent of the clergy are female, despite a near doubling of female seminary enrollment since 1980.
The numbers defy the idea that women would naturally excel in a job that requires counseling and interpersonal skills. Where the theory breaks down with women clergy is in its failure to consider the long-standing Western Christian tradition of male authority, replete with ubiquitous images of Jesus and the disciples, said Patricia Chang, another Hartford Seminary researcher.
``You'd think that women would fit into that role [ministry] more quickly, but it's the exception that proves the rule,'' she said.
The study was conducted from August 1993 to February 1994 by Lummis, Chang and Barbara Brown Zikmund for the seminary's Center for Social and Religious Research. The researchers found startlingly different experiences for men and women ordained since 1970.
The most frequently cited career goal of both men and women was to be sole pastors of churches. But while 43 percent of men achieved their dream, only 19 percent of women did. The first job of more than one-third of women seminary graduates was as an associate or assistant minister.
Asked about their present jobs, two-thirds of male clergy were either sole pastors or senior pastors, while just 39 percent of women held such jobs. Nineteen percent of women held assistant positions, more than twice the percentage of men in such jobs.
Examining overall clergy figures, the researchers found the percentages of active clergywomen actually fell from 1986 to 1994 in the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ), Episcopal Church, Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) and the United Methodist Church.
In some more-evangelical churches such as the Wesleyan Churches and the Assemblies of God, the total number of clergywomen remained about the same.
One reason researchers give for clergywomen's stalled progress is a declining job market in mainline churches, which have lost millions of members in the last generation.
However, even that excuse is related to a basic bias against women in the pulpits in many churches, researchers said.
``What's amazing is there are a lot of men out there who are getting jobs. They're doing fine and are unaware women are still struggling,'' Chang said.
And while churches opened themselves to women clergy in recent decades, no laws forbid them from discriminating in their hiring.
Answering only to themselves, many denominations have cut back or eliminated staff whose job it was to prod congregations to consider and hire female candidates. This surrendered ground to the informal ``old-boy networks'' that have traditionally been responsible for most clergy placements, the study authors said.
Even when churches use computerized employment networks or forbid the exclusion of any candidate, the reality is that many churches still look for men to preach to them, researchers said.
``You will have all these liberal-speaking people on the church governing boards who will say, `Personally, I have no problem [with a woman pastor] ... but what would our older, wealthy parishioners do?''' Lummis said.
R. Douglas Brackenridge, a religion professor at Trinity University in San Antonio, Texas, said pulpit committees in the Presbyterian Church are required to look at resumes from women and minority candidates, but the rule does not have much effect.
``They take a look at the dossier and throw it down - `We considered it,''' said Brackenridge, co-author of ``Presbyterian Women in America: Two Centuries of a Quest for Status.''
He said the Hartford study backs up earlier research.
``There still is a residual resistance to women in the pastoral ministry,'' Brackenridge said. ``It's still there.''
by CNB