Called and Challenged: Examining the Experiences of Women Clergy in Brazos County and Harris County, Texas
Abstract
Although women clergy have been ordained in many American Christian denominations since the mid-twentieth century, women clergy still make up a minority of clergy within their respective denominations despite making up half of qualified seminary graduates. Women therefore appear to decline to pursue ordination or to leave pastoral ministry at a higher rate than men. Existing literature suggests that reasons for women leaving ministry include challenges with hiring discrimination, the pay gap, family needs, and other factors which contribute to burnout. This study uses qualitative methods to explore the reasons which may lead clergywomen to leave ministry in Brazos County and Harris County, Texas, through open-ended interviews with clergywomen and women who formerly served as clergy. By focusing on clergy within a specific regional context, this study examines the influence of regional bodies and local cultural norms on the experiences of clergywomen. I find that all of the above factors influence clergywomen's choice to stay in or leave ministry and that many women’s decisions to leave ministry are based on a combination of these reasons. Building on the existing literature exploring the many obstacles that female clergy encounter, I suggest that women clergy are subject to “gender tests” which serve to maintain the patriarchal character of clergy even while a woman is occupying a certain clergy position. These tests take the form of microaggressions about clergywomen’s physical “femaleness” and aim to counteract any potential change in the culturally normative gender of clergy. The resulting continuation of the idea of inherently male clergy exacerbates existing hiring discrimination and congregational bias against women clergy.
Subject
religious studieswomen clergy
interviews
gender studies
gender tests
undergraduate research
Citation
Rutherford, Sarah J (2022). Called and Challenged: Examining the Experiences of Women Clergy in Brazos County and Harris County, Texas. Undergraduate Research Scholars Program. Available electronically from https : / /hdl .handle .net /1969 .1 /200617.