Thirty Years of Women Priests in the Church of England and Still Two Thirds of Paid Posts Are Held by Men

by Rev Martine Oborne, Chair of WATCH (Women and the Church), a group that works for gender equality in the Church of England

Suppose you are a senior leader of a major institution in the UK, two thirds of whose customers are female, and you are asked to set a gender diversity target for all the paid posts in your institution. You would probably come up with a figure of 50% for women or even more.

Now suppose that you work for a major institution in the UK whose customers are two thirds female and which publicly states that it is committed to all roles in the institution being open equally to all people irrespective of gender. Then you would probably be upset when that institution sets a gender diversity target for paid posts at 70% for men and 30% for women.

Welcome to the Blackburn diocese in the Church of England, which has set these gender diversity targets – apparently matching the national figures which, after thirty years of women priests, show men holding over two thirds of stipendiary posts.

I don’t know what the current statistics are for Blackburn diocese, because the Church of England has stopped producing gender diversity statistics since 2020. But in 2020 the Blackburn diocese was said to have 24% of its paid posts held by women. So it’s hardly a very ambitious target for this to increase to 30%. And, when we look at the small print more closely, we see that the target is not a percentage of all the posts available in the diocese but only of the ones that are open to women.

Confused? You may well be, but the situation in the Church of England is that, while it claims that all its roles are open to all people irrespective of gender, it still allows churches to pass resolutions saying they do not want a female vicar and they do not want to be under the oversight of a female bishop.

Blackburn Diocese’s recent Statement of Needs, which was issued when it was looking to appoint a new bishop, said it has 235 parishes and 30 of these have passed resolutions saying they will not have a female vicar. For 18 of these, this is because they do not think the Church of England has the authority to ordain women as priests. For the other 12 it’s because they believe God created men to be leaders and women to support them in that leadership in the Church, a theology which is referred to as Complementarianism but is also described, more accurately, as Male Headship.

So Blackburn’s target is 30% of a smaller number of posts than the 24% of a slightly larger number of posts in the official statistics three years ago. Which is hardly ambitious or encouraging.

But it’s not surprising. If senior clergy in Blackburn had any serious intention of increasing the number of female clergy in their diocese, then they would not have supported the recent selection of a diocesan bishop who does not ordain women as priests.

It will be said that the Bishop of Blackburn is highly supportive of women and has encouraged the appointment of many women to posts in Blackburn, but many female clergy will not apply for posts in a diocese where the Bishop overseeing them does not believe the Church had the authority to ordain them. And, furthermore, that bishop would therefore not receive bread and wine consecrated by them – even though he is happy for parishioners and others to receive their sacraments.

If the decision makers for this appointment had had any doubt about this issue, they might have researched the situation in the only other diocese in the Church of England that is headed by a bishop who does not ordain women: Chichester. Chichester has had the same diocesan bishop since 2012, two years before women were allowed to be made bishops, and he does not ordain women as priests. And I believe this is a major factor in why Chichester is at the bottom of the league table in terms of the percentage of women holding stipendiary posts. Again, we don’t have up-to-date official statistics but in 2020 16% of stipendiary posts in Chichester were held by women, 84% by men.

Talking with a senior leader in Chichester recently, I asked whether things were getting any better there for women. The leader told me that the statistics are probably slightly worse now, despite the fact that they were all working very hard to attract women and could not understand why more women didn’t apply for posts in Chichester. I suggested that the problem might be that many female clergy, myself included, would not take on a job in a diocese when the most senior bishop had any question over my ordination or my ability to consecrate the sacraments. And only when a fully affirming Bishop is in charge is this likely to change.

Goal 5 of the UN’s Sustainable Development Targets is to end all forms of discrimination against all women and girls everywhere – recognising, among other things, that understandings of male privilege are drivers of abuse against women and girls.  The UN asks us to imagine what our world might look like if we achieved this by 2030. And I would say that, if this were the case, then the world would look a lot more like the Kingdom of God that Jesus proclaimed two thousand years ago – in which there is no last, no first, no lesser, no greater – but all human beings are treated equally.

The Church of England, as the country’s established Church, has the opportunity and responsibility to take a moral lead in ensuring the human rights of all people are protected. Women’s rights are human rights, and our Church cannot advocate for human rights while it has institutionalised discrimination against women and other groups – which legitimises sexism and sometimes abuse.

I was at a large meeting of female clergy recently and was shocked to hear story after story of putdowns and underminings, everyday sexism, that women were experiencing in the Church. They said they could not raise these issues with senior clergy for fear of being seen as difficult or moaning – so it was only in the safe environment of an all-female group that they were comfortable to share their experiences. Which, to my mind, is a very unsafe culture that the Church has now created.

Many women do as we are told and show so-called ‘gracious restraint,’ but this is wearing female clergy down and affecting their well-being. One woman, on the point of resigning her post, said to me, ‘Taken alone, each incident can be brushed off as not very important. But it’s like death by a thousand cuts and one day you realise that you are done.’

Let’s set some new targets in the Church of England for bringing about true gender equity and balance. First, to get rid of the institutionalised discrimination. And, secondly, to seek that 50% of stipendiary posts are held by women and 50% by men. I truly believe it is just that simple.