The barrier and the stained-glass ceiling. Analyzing female careers in religious organizations

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Sociologie du travail 52S (2010) e22–e39

The barrier and the stained-glass ceiling. Analyzing female careers in religious organizations夽 Béatrice de Gasquet ∗ Centre d’études interdisciplinaires des faits religieux, 10, rue Monsieur-le-Prince, 75006 Paris, France

Abstract This article surveys existing research (principally in France and the United States) concerning women’s access to a religious career based on ordination (as in Christianity and Judaism). In the first part of the article, we look at how the “barrier” that ordination may represent for the feminization of religious management is dealt with. Research on what is at stake when ordaining women into the various religious organizations allows us to point to factors that separate cases where women access religious authority officially, from cases where they only possess it unofficially, and those where they are excluded. The second part looks at “levels”, i.e. the persisting imbalance between feminine and masculine careers in the religious organizations where the prohibition no longer obtains. The comparison with other professional milieus is stressed, since behind the apparently specific nature of a religious universe, mechanisms are often similar, as the expression in our title – “the stained-glass ceiling” – implies. © 2010 Elsevier Masson SAS. All rights reserved. Keywords: Profession; Organization; Career; Religion; Gender; Feminization; Authority; France; United States

Sociological research on gender relations within religious organizations is still today sparse, and most of the studies that exist are North American. Religion in modern times has often been considered by sociologists and feminist researchers as an archaic residue, scientifically secondary, or too exotic to be accessible to nonspecialists, or conversely, as the site where women’s alienation is most pronounced. In both cases, the result was limited scholarly investment: in the later case, women’s oppression seemed so self-evident that it made the detailed study of their daily life unnecessary. Religious feminisms (Protestant and Jewish for the main part) have been significant in allowing the question to emerge scientifically.

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Translation: Gabrielle Varro, 2009. Sociologie du Travail, 51 (Suppl. 2), pp. 218–236. Équipe enquêtes, terrains, théories, centre Maurice-Halbwachs, 48, boulevard Jourdan, 75014 Paris, France. E-mail address: [email protected].

0038-0296/$ – see front matter © 2010 Elsevier Masson SAS. All rights reserved. doi:10.1016/j.soctra.2010.06.002

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In the United States, defending women’s right to ordination1 was on the agenda of Protestant, Jewish and Catholic feminists during the 1970s, with variable degrees of success. Today, studying women’s careers among the Protestant clergy, labeled “Women in clergy research”, is a lively subfield in North American research, both because of the relatively large number of women officiating in certain denominations,2 and due to the demand for sociological expertise by religious denominations that have given sociologists access to their books, facilitating large, statistical surveys of their clergy. The situation is in marked contrast with France. The predominance of Catholicism partly explains the difficult emergence of religious feminisms (Rochefort, 2004) and that the issue of feminization, in the face of the rarely disputed male control of clergy in the Catholic Church, is less visible there. Research at the intersection of the sociology of work and the sociology of religion has also been less common in France, in a context where religion is often viewed by sociologists as an autonomous subfield, than in the United States. Despite a few notable exceptions (Willaime, 1989; Dubar and Tripier, 2003), clerics are less systematically included in the definition of professions in France than in the United States. Research on the sexual division of religious labor is at present experiencing a revival, and work is now available on Protestantism (Willaime, 1996; Malogne-Fer, 2005), Catholicism (Béraud, 2007; Della Sudda, 2007), Judaism (de Gasquet, 2008) and Islam (Boubekeur, 2003). These authors use gender as an analytical category, and more generally, try to make religious studies less parochial by resorting to theories and tools crafted in other subfields (such as the sociology of occupations or the literature on social movements). This article3 reviews existing research (principally in the United States and France) bearing on women’s access to religious careers conditioned by ordination. In a first section, we focus on how the “barrier” that ordination may represent for the feminization of religious management is overcome. We then consider the “levels”, i.e. the asymmetries in careers between men and women in organizations where women have been granted full access to ordination. The phrase coined in the U.S., “stained-glass ceiling”4 (Purvis, 1995; Sullins, 2000), conveys the idea that religion differs only marginally from the corporate world. Asking whether a glass ceiling prevails in religious contexts leads us first to present the potential careers in the field, i.e. to characterize and examine the hierarchy of clerical positions in religious organizations. Factors defining positions of power, prestige, or authority in any given religious group may vary considerably according to religion, denomination, the national scene. Directly comparing Episcopal ministers, Catholic priests and Reform rabbis, for instance, is anything but self-evident. But the way their occupations are defined, which is inseparable from the type of organization to

1 I will be using the terms “ordination” and “clergy” in a very broad sense (in the United States, they are also used in the case of non-orthodox Judaism), but their meaning and usage vary according to the religious current. Ordination here is defined as the validation by a religious organization of the theological competences of an individual – as opposed to the male and female prophets and magicians of the Weberian model – in a context where the definition of a religious career has been relatively homogenized and centralized by the religious institution ([Nesbitt, 1998a] and [Nesbitt, 1998b]). 2 In the U.S., the term “denomination” refers to the organizational subdivisions within one and the same Protestant branch (e.g. the African Methodist Episcopal Church and the United Methodist Church are two distinct denominations within the Methodist Church). 3 I wish to thank Marie Buscatto and Catherine Marry for their generous and stimulating advice on this article. 4 The expression “stained-glass ceiling” (which echoes “glass ceiling”), though its precise origin remains mysterious, is often employed – since the beginning of the 1990s at least – in the English-language press concerning Protestant churches and more generally religions. In most cases, the expression only stresses the similarity of what takes place in the working world and the world of religion; but sometimes it also conveys the idea that the glass ceiling in the religious world is more visible and more difficult to break through than elsewhere.

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which they belong, has consequences for the dynamics of feminization. Therefore, after having presented the main statistical data concerning male and female careers in a variety of religious groups, we will concentrate on the mechanisms that might explain the dualism persisting in those careers, which implies taking into account the different ways the occupations of priest, minister or rabbi are constructed on the level of an organization, a local community, and the individual. 1. Getting beyond the barrier. Women’s access to religious authority Today, in Protestantism as well as Judaism, the issue of women’s ordination is a major bone of contention between liberals and traditionalists. This has not always been the case, as demonstrated by research on the various aspects that can explain the positions of the denominations.5 1.1. Women’s ordination, a major divide in the religious world today 1.1.1. Women’s access to the rabbinate and the pastorate in the United States Ordaining women is a fairly ancient practice among Protestants in the U.S., even though modalities have varied and even though it has remained confined to “liberal” denominations. The two periods during which the most important collective decisions to ordain women were made, i.e. the 1880s – with limited results in terms of numbers – and the 1970s, coincided with the two first waves of feminism. From their founding conference on, at Seneca Falls in 1848, American feminists raised the question of women’s ordination. The 19th century in the U.S. was marked by the strong presence of women in the Second Great Awakening: they were traveling preachers, and sometimes even initiators of a church or religious trend. Antoinette Brown was the first woman to be ordained minister in a Congregationalist Church in 1853; her example, unique at the time, was followed by several other denominations during the 1880s (Nesbitt, 1998b). The main Protestant denominations in the U.S. adopted formal policies of gender equality in matters of accessing clerical positions especially during the second half of the 20th century. The rate of feminization of the clergy at this time displayed the same upward trend as in other higher professions such as judge or physician, though at a slower pace: constantly, below 5% until the 1970s, feminization began its relative upward surge in 1970. According to the U.S. Census bureau (2005), 15% of the “clergy” is now feminized (i.e. ca. 60.000 women), while women represent approximately 65% of the wage earners in religious organizations (including persons in charge of religious instruction),6 masking in fact a wide spectrum of situations. The two most important religious groups in the U.S., Catholics and the Southern Baptist Convention,7 do not accept women’s ordination. The Pentecostal movement is divided: its dogma is hostile to the ordination of women, though actual practice is more complex (see below); moreover, certain churches, especially those founded by women, accept female ordination. The Episcopal, Methodist, Lutheran, Presbyterian, and some Baptist churches have quite a few woman preachers, or even bishops. 5 I draw here principally on the work by Mark Chaves and Paula Nesbitt for Protestantism, by Pamela Nadell for Judaism. 6 Source: U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, 2005. In France, according to INSEE, 9% of the category “clergy, religious personnel” is feminized (the percentage includes mainly Catholic nuns). 7 In 2000, the Southern Baptist Convention canceled its 1994 decision to permit women’s ordination (the women previously ordained were allowed to keep their status).

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American Judaism tends to replicate this chronology (Nadell, 1998). The question arose among Reform Jews as early as the end of the 19th century, when, before her marriage, Ray Frank (1861–1948) was celebrated as the “young girl rabbi of the West”, despite the fact that she refused to ask for ordination. Although theoretical acceptance was given lip service by the Central Conference of American Rabbis in 1922 (in practice blocked by the head of the rabbinical seminary), it was only due to the pressure of the feminist movement that the first women were ordained rabbis in the two main currents of non-orthodox American Judaism: in 1972 for Reform Judaism, in 1985 for Conservative Judaism.8 Aside from some borderline itineraries however, the ordination of women is not even a question within Orthodox Judaism. The Catholic Church in the U.S. has also been an area where feminists took a stand on the question of female ordination, with the creation in 1975 of the Women’s Ordination Conference (WOC). Though U.S. bishops are by and large in favor of seeing the Church’s positions make some headway on the subject, the demand for female ordination has had little militant impact outside the U.S. Contrary to the Episcopal Church, dissident Catholic ordinations of women in the Danube in June 2002 did not influence the Vatican’s positions or politics. The only remaining option is the possibility of opening up the diaconate to women. In various European countries, women have been ordained since the first half of the 20th century. The first female rabbi was Regina Jonas, ordained in Germany in 1933. These were sometimes isolated instances linked to the inside history of a community, with no connection to the general policy of gender equality, but they also sometimes reflected the influence of organized religious feminism. In the Lutheran churches of Scandinavia, which are State churches, feminization was imposed by the State, which promulgated more far-reaching laws to insure women’s access to public office (Norway in 1938; Denmark in 1947). After the 1970s, women’s access to the ministry became general throughout the Protestant world, especially in denominations closely linked to North American organizations. The Church of England’s 1992 decision to allow women to enter the pastorate is in this respect a landmark. 1.1.2. When female ordination is prohibited: the barrier, and ways to circumvent it When women have not gained official access to religious office, the formal prohibition, though often internalized by men and women alike,9 may nevertheless be averted in practical terms, even when the religious institution is simultaneously producing symbolic systems to protect it. It may even be said that a religious institution’s official position concerning the ordination of women does not reflect the actual sexual division of labor. Mark Chaves convincingly argues that one has to start with the general hypothesis of a “loose coupling” between the approved rules and the local routines observed in religious organizations (Chaves, 1997). In certain configurations, laywomen perform the same acts as male priests or ministers but without receiving the official title or, of course, the material or symbolic rewards, in ways that closely resemble situations analyzed in the sociology of work, such as those of keyboard operators and typographers (Maruani and Nicole, 1989), or of woman farmers who in France long remained invisible under the label “family assistants” (Barthez, 1982). In the U.S. as in France, the Catholic church is typical of configurations where women carry out functions close to the priest’s – whether managing the parish, officiating in the liturgy or performing spiritual duties – without being given the title ([Wallace, 1992] and [Béraud, 2007]). The 8

Today, women represent a little over 20% of Reform and slightly over 10% of Conservative rabbis. C. Béraud insists on, and subtly analyzes, the lack of contest in the discourse of female lay workers in the Catholic Church (Béraud, 2007). 9

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work carried out by Ruth Wallace in the U.S. on women appointed parish administrators by their bishop, and, in France, by Céline Béraud on the sexual division of religious labor between priests, deacons and laymen and women, analyzes how such boundaries are both displaced by a constant “bricolage” and at the same time kept up by the constant reaffirmation of the “celibate male monopoly on sacrament” (Béraud, 2007, p. 72). The ongoing feminization of roles that were formerly the priests’ province, and which started with teaching Sunday School, today takes the form of being chaplain in a hospital, celebrating funerals, organizing services, answering to the bishop. Although the institution repeatedly insists on the limits laypeople must not transgress (e.g. hearing a confession, in the case of chaplains), “different forms of internal compromise, arrangements and ‘bricolages’ [. . .] make the activities as well as the social recognition of unordained staff possible” (Béraud, 2007, p. 141), particularly as concerns titles and religious ornaments. When women are employed, though sometimes they are better paid than the priest, their status with regard to labor laws and Canon Law is extremely precarious (Béraud, 2006). The most difficult hurdle to overcome in terms of visibility is the liturgy, which remains one of the primary sources of legitimacy – as in the case of women who prepare the liturgical service but have no place in its actual celebration. The distinction between what defines the priesthood or the pastorate and what women actually do could be considered purely symbolic – a matter of semantics. Among Pentecostal groups (where women do not have the right to be ministers), women’s sermons – which take the form of informal “testimonies” – greatly resemble the minister’s rhetoric (Lawless, 1983). In the case of Black Baptist churches, a woman can “teach” but, contrary to a minister, she is not allowed to “preach” from the pulpit. However, in the case of the Church of God in Christ, the official definition of “teaching” includes “being responsible for the Church when the minister is away”. “Church mothers”, usually female elders with long religious careers in back of them, and who hold certifications as “Missionaries” or “Evangelists”, detain a moral authority at least equal to the minister’s. Cheryl T. Gilkes shows that in these churches, the balance of power has bishops and ministers on one side of the scale, and women’s organizations on the other – for they represent the main reserve of religious vocations – but they are also the main fund-raisers. Masculine control over the clergy would be undermined were it not for the system of the “double pulpit (the lectern for women, the “real” pulpit for men), which functions symbolically as a call to order by making sure that men and women do not preach from the same place (Gilkes, 2001). In other cases, obstacles are more radically sidestepped when women simply quit their institution so as to be able to celebrate the ritual, as some women who studied theology in conservative Protestant movements have done. Since they could not find a congregation to take them on as minister, or a teaching position in a conservative Protestant university, they simply left their denomination. Yet others founded their own church (Ingersoll, 2003). Usually, though, having accomplished the same curriculum as the men but unable to access pastoral praxis, the women end up on a parallel religious labor market, as happens with female Muslim elites in France, be they intellectuals, preachers, or translators (Boubekeur, 2004). 1.2. When the barrier crumbles: why a religious institution opens its doors to women 1.2.1. Factors favorable to female ordination How can one explain that a given religious group will one fine day decide to authorize women’s ordination? Similarly to the feminization taking place in other professions ([Marry, 2004] and [Lapeyre, 2006]), several reasons have been suggested (for an overall approach, see Chaves, 1997).

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The simplest explanation, in terms of numbers – a dearth of masculine vocations, an affluence of female applicants – is also the least convincing. In fact, counter-examples exist in both directions: while the Catholic church is experiencing both the crisis of priestly callings and the rejection of feminization, the Presbyterian church, when it decided to ordain women in 1956, boasted on the contrary an excess of masculine but few or no female applicants, and women’s ordinations only really got under way in the 1970s (Chaves, 1997). In the short term, the lack of clergymen due to war may explain the decision to ordain women, often with an asymmetrical status, as was the case of the first French Protestant ordinations in Alsace-Lorraine between the two World Wars (Willaime, 1998); but that did not make the practice a general rule. Secondly, correlations have sometimes been observed between feminization and redefining the religious profession itself, without cause and effect always being crystal clear. Indeed, following the religious trends and the times, the professions of priest, minister or rabbi either concentrate on the ritual, on preaching and teaching, or on “healing souls”. Depending on the case, it may resemble other professions such as psychology or social work, which are also strongly feminized. Thus, for Jean-Paul Willaime, the feminization of the French pastorate is connected to its evolution from teaching to social work and psychology (Willaime, 2002). But that does not explain why some denominations resist feminization more than others. Another factor that must be taken into account is the theological definition of the clergy, which greatly varies according to religious obedience. Some observers think there is a definite connection between a sacred conception of ordination and the religious profession on one hand, resisting feminization on the other. That would explain in particular the resistance of the Catholic Church and, to a lesser extent, of the Anglican churches. More generally, feminization has sometimes been interpreted as the apex of the historical process of secularization that affected the clergy starting with the Reformation (Willaime, 1998), with an important caveat: it cannot be taken for granted that the end of a “magical” vision of the priesthood is directly linked to feminization.10 The argument does not hold for Orthodox Judaism either, since being a rabbi is not conceived of as a sacrament. Though the presence of women in theological universities is not in itself sufficient to make a religious institution change its mind, it might be that the decision to ordain women correlates more generally with the importance newly bestowed on theological knowledge validated by a diploma. The French Polynesian Evangelical Church’s 1995 decision to allow women into the ministry shows that a scholarly logic now underpins the legitimacy of the clergy: in 1993, the baccalauréat became compulsory for admission into the ministry (Malogne-Fer, 2007). Another criterion of a theological nature is the religious authority of the sacred texts. Biblically inerrant denominations are among the most adamantly opposed to feminization, arguing that the texts explicitly exclude women’s ordination or (more frequently) do not provide for it (as in the case of Orthodox Judaism). However, some authors point out that, on one hand, the texts are always ambivalent on the issue, and go on to remark that certain Pentecostal churches, now commonly identified as fundamentalist, were more open than today to female preaching when they were founded towards the end of the 19th and beginning of the 20th century. One factor which has had a particularly clear impact is the degree of centralization of religious organizations. Historically, the first religious groups to ordain women at the end of the 19th century were mostly decentralized. In such groups, local congregations are free to recruit whomever they

10 The connection between the depreciation of a profession and feminization still remains to be clarified, or even discredited (Cacouault-Bitaud, 2001).

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wish and have a certain amount of autonomy when applying the rules decided upon by the central authority, while a centralized organization may veto the choice of a local community. We will see, on the other hand, that once women’s ordination has been accepted, centralized organizations ensure women’s professional integration better than decentralized ones. Centralization thus does not seem to threaten the barrier with destruction, but it is more effective in the further course of events against the mechanisms of the glass ceiling. As to more specifically organizational aspects, the fact that women’s organizations already existed in the past – missionary societies, local associations (such as Synagogue Sisterhoods in the U.S.) – is also decisive for promoting feminization, on condition however that they are sufficiently autonomous within the global religious organization, e.g. that their delegates have the right to vote at the organization’s national congress, that they can supervise how the funds they raised are managed. These groups are crucial assets for women, especially because they allow them to learn to speak in public in a sacred space, thereby accustoming the masculine clergy to women’s presence in the pulpit (Higginbotham, 1993). During a first phase, laywomen’s organizations became the main protagonists, by introducing the cause of female ordination into the religious organizations. In situations where feminism irrigated the religious universe, particularly during the 1970s in the U.S., they were relayed by more specific organizations of women who were themselves candidates to become ministers or rabbis. Often already engaged in theological studies and therefore possessing a social capital, as well as an institutionally recognized expertise, they had the legitimacy and capacity to reinterpret the texts in a feminist sense (Hyman, 1995; Chaves and Cavendish, 1997). Broadly speaking, feminism stimulated the creation of women’s networks that penetrated even the most conservative religious groups. 1.2.2. A question of religious politics In a book of major importance on the theological debates surrounding the ordination of women, Mark Chaves defends the idea that the decisive factors were not internal – neither theological nor organizational – but external. Comparing one hundred of the foremost Protestant American denominations, and backed by a review of the historical literature on the question, he debates the likelihood that a given organization should decide to ordain women at some given point in time, and shows that one of the best ways to predict this is to analyze the position of the organization within the network of Protestant denominations. As Protestantism is in the process of being restructured, in particular by the divergence between a liberal and a conservative pole, denominational rules about women “function like symbolic markers of membership in and allegiance to one or the other denominational subculture” (Chaves, 1997, p. 57). Accepting women’s ordination is tantamount to sending out a “signal” to the other denominations, eventually severing ties with conservative groups that were formerly allies, or reacting to the pressures or expectations of a “liberal” denomination with which there is more affinity. M. Chaves shows in particular that, while a fundamentalist religious current was in the making within American Protestantism during the 1920s and 1930s, refusing the ordination of women became a sine qua non of membership in that denominational subculture (Bendroth, 1993). The policy reversals of certain churches or Bible institutes came in answer to calls to order on the part of other religious groups, in a context of growing interdependency.11 Contrarywise, though, at the heart of the fundamentalist movement, those that have remained the most flexible on the issue are organizations with distinctive, independent networks, such as the Pentecostals. 11 For instance, the Moody Bible School, one of the emblematic institutes of Fundamentalist Protestantism in America – today rabidly hostile to the ordination of women – welcomed women into its pastoral study program until 1929.

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This thesis has to a certain extent been confirmed by the work of Edward C. Lehman and others on lay resistance to female ministers: though most layleaders declare they are personally in favor of female clergy, when it comes to deciding on a woman’s application, they are sufficiently afraid the influential or prestigious members of the parish may desert the community to refuse recruiting her (Lehman, 1987). M. Chaves also shows that the connection between ordaining women (a position that upholds the principle of gender equality) and religious politics is not automatic, that it emerged historically. He points out that the association between the two did not yet exist in the 19th century: women asking for the right to be ordained did not necessarily do so in the name of gender equality as a principle, but used rather the argument of the exception to the rule, or of a personal calling, and for instance did not oppose male dominance in the couple. Chaves also describes the social and political circumstances behind the connection between women’s ordination and the principle of equality, born with the urban and educated Abolitionist movement at the start of the 19th century. A contrario, in contemporary times, the few cases in which women exercise pastoral functions and at the same time uphold conservative values (e.g. submission to one’s husband), as Pentecostal women from poor, rural, Missouri families do, are the furthest removed from the middle-classes that formed the core of the feminist movement (Lawless, 1988). But as ideas of gender equality spread, the denominations opposing female ordination hardened their stand, for it meant “they resist something more than actual females on pulpits and at altars. They resist modernity” (Chaves, 1997, p. 83). Far from heralding the generalization of women’s ordination in the Protestant world, that approach underlines the historical process of religious polarization, in which the issue has somehow been instrumentalized (Judaism has known a similar process). 2. Up against the stained-glass ceiling. Classical mechanisms of the construction of differences? In religious groups, where women have accessed ordination, and whatever the rate of feminization of the clergy, women come up against a very real glass ceiling that stops them from accessing leadership positions. After describing the phenomenon, we will isolate a few mechanisms that emerge from research carried out on the topic ([Carroll et al., 1983], [Zikmund et al., 1998], [Sullins, 2000], [Cohen and Schor, 2004] and [Adams, 2007]). 2.1. The limits of feminization: the “stained-glass ceiling” Though women generally represent the bulk of parishioners, of wage-earners, and today often one half of the ordained cohorts as well, they do not reach the same positions as their male colleagues and the number of women diminishes as one climbs up the religious ladder.12 When they work in a local community, women ministers are always more likely to be in a subordinate or solo post in a small, less central, older, and poorer community compared to the men ordained the same year as they were. They are also more often in communities that do not have the means

12 One of the hierarchical indicators most commonly applied is the distinction between heading a community and having other ministers or rabbis under one’s orders (senior pastor/rabbi), or leading a commmunity alone (solo pastor/rabbi), or assisting another rabbi or minister (assistant rabbi). That pecking order is generally completed by correlating it with the size of the community. Hierarchies allow comparing religious groups that do not attribute the same terminology or the same levels to their clerical positions.

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to employ full-time personnel. Partly, because more of them occupy part-time positions, women are less well-paid than men. Above all, female ministers are less often than men taken on by local communities – by laymen and women – and therefore by the religious organizations themselves; they are more often hired for a “specialized ministry” positions (e.g. as chaplain in a hospital or on a campus, as faculty in religious schools, or in a community center in the case of rabbis), or at the denominational level, in the religious group’s central administration. Though it is not a foregone conclusion that such positions should be either more or less prestigious than in local congregations, they remain marginal, on the fringes of the “normal” role of minister or rabbi. At the outset of their career, women take longer than men to land an appointment, except in denominations that centralize their recruitments and impose their candidates on the parishes (Chang, 1997). Time does not reduce the career inequalities between men and women. For instance, in the Episcopal Church at the beginning of the 1980s, over 40% of the men and a little under 20% of the women became rectors13 within 7 years of their ordination; in the early 1990s, these figures fell to 20% and 10% respectively, in a general atmosphere of dwindling career perspectives (Sullins, 2000). Women’s admission to the highest ranking positions in the religious hierarchy is limited, despite symbolic breakthroughs that are praised to high heaven by the press but usually generate discord between denominations.14 All the stumbling blocks at this level are far from having disappeared: women today represent nearly 25% of the Anglican clergy in the United Kingdom (thus somewhat over 2.000 individuals) and as many women as men are ordained each year – but a woman cannot become bishop. There are women at the head of theology departments or seminaries, but the glass ceiling also exists among professors. Another key instance are the top decision-makers in religious policy, at the intersection between theologians, religious lawmakers and organization leaders. One example: the rabbinical committee summoned in December 2006 to issue a statement concerning the official position of Conservative Judaism on gay and lesbian marriage and the ordination of homosexual rabbis was composed of 23 men and two women. 2.2. The principal mechanisms of the construction of a “religious gender” Research in the U.S. bears mainly on Protestantism (and within it, mainly on certain denominations, such as Episcopalians or Presbyterians), and it is mostly statistical. The two most popular approaches consist in examining differences in “ministry style” (women’s different values supposedly explain their choice of a different career), or the effects of managerial techniques (the professional acceptance of women supposedly depends on the denominations). 2.2.1. A question of “style”? Much of existing research ([Lehman, 1993], [Zikmund et al., 1998], [McDuff, 2001] and [McDuff and Mueller, 2002]) uses statistical surveys to test the idea that women have a “style” of leadership of their own, and more generally, “values” different from men’s. The differentialist perspective is omnipresent in religious life as much as in business or politics, and derives its 13 A relatively high position in the extremely codified hierarchy of that church: elected by lay people after consulting the bishop, rectors direct and recruit members of the clergy and lay staff at parish level. 14 Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori was elected in 2006 at the head of the Episcopal Church of the United States (where women have been ordained since 1976, bishops since 1989), at the cost of much friction with the other Anglican churches, and first of all with the Church of England.

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authority from discourse in which inequalities between men and women are assumed to be the result of female choices: for example, women are supposed to prefer small to large communities. The surveys mentioned above rarely question such discourse; more often, they limit themselves to coding people’s answers unilaterally in terms of masculinity or femininity (applying the Bem Sex Role Inventory), and to noting that, on the whole, women declare “feminine” and men “masculine” attitudes. However, a few authors do try to narrow down the gap, by showing that for a large number of questions, the distance between men and women is negligible, or even by suggesting that the difference is not really natural, since it varies according to social category (and particularly according to generation, ethnic group, position in the pecking order). Some go still further by suggesting that such talk is partly constructed and instrumentalized: on one side, at different stages of their religious careers in the U.S., men and women are forced to take personality tests which impose or ascertain their conformity to gender norms, and thus learn to anticipate those expectations; on the other, adhering to values such as “selflessness” may allow women to justify the fact they have accepted less gratifying working conditions than men, or than they would have done in other professions.15 Gender studies allow one to hold such naturalizing language at arm’s length, especially where part-time work is concerned, for it is rarely chosen of one’s own free will ([Lallement, 2000] and [Maruani, 2000]). At the same time, differentialist discourses on proximity, dialogue, even maternal competences such as “womanlyness” are also in certain cases instrumentalized by the women themselves (on their implementation in politics, see Achin and Paoletti, 2002), the more so as psychological language is omnipresent in the religious world. In point of fact, during their interviews, parishioners as well as ministers or rabbis often raised those questions, which warrants we take them seriously when analyzing the way such ideas are socially constructed and applied. Questionnaires do not happen to be the most appropriate tools to do this, especially when they purely and simply parrot psychological or managerial categories. 2.2.2. Choosing their vocation Do women who enter religious careers possess different social characteristics from their masculine counterparts? J.-P. Willaime has suggested that, relatively speaking, the “pioneers” were “over-selected” socially: more educated, and, as daughters or wives in well-to-do milieus, more privileged than their masculine colleagues; thus, in France, while ministers’ wives were frequently homemakers, teachers or nurses, female ministers’ spouses are more often managers or executives (Willaime, 1998). Awareness of a possible social over-selection of female ministers compared to their masculine colleagues – which is similar to what takes place in other professions – is less frequent in American statistical research. Differences in terms of candidates’ profiles do suggest that a selection has taken place upstream – but if women are relatively over-selected, is it not because they have had to overcome greater obstacles? The way a “vocation” is constructed through religious socialization is an important stake (Suaud, 1978). Teachers, deacons, rabbis, etc. are the ones who “notice” the children or adolescents likely to espouse a religious career later on, who will depict their religious commitment as legitimate by labeling it a “calling” and who channel the others on to different paths. Gwendoline Malogne-Fer has shown that in Protestant parishes in Tahiti, deacons “notice” boys who will then be encouraged to go on to Pastoral School but never encourage any girl. In the case of French Reform Judaism, the young women involved in the religious life of their syn-

15

Frequently a second job.

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agogue will more often than not be offered a career teaching religion, while the young men will be offered careers as rabbis.16 Such mechanisms of selection and tracking continue to operate in the seminary afterward (Finlay, 2003). Selection is not always transparent, but it has been powerfully internalized and many women “choose” to go into teaching religion or theology rather than ordination, not only among the generations before the orders were opened up to women, but also among the younger ones. Understanding the mechanisms by which the gender norms of religious vocations are internalized is essential to see what checks the feminization of the clergy – women are “naturally” more attracted by teaching or becoming deacons – as well as the differences of orientation within clerical careers. In fact, women’s orientation towards “specialized ministries” and positions external to the synagogues or parishes is first and foremost the product of local communities’ resistance to recruiting women. But previous religious socialization may retrospectively provide arguments for rationalizing those choices a posteriori (Bourdieu’s amor fati). How their vocation comes to men and women would require qualitative study: what are the social, organizational and biographical mechanisms that might explain that the characteristics of men and women who choose or are directed towards a religious career are not identical? Knowing what went before would add to surveys that study what happens, after ordination and show how the gap between men and women of equivalent age, education, date of ordination and denomination widens. However, on the issue of the gendered construction of a calling, and on the “career” – in the interactionist sense of the term – that leads to being directed towards the ministry, the literature is scanter and less developed than in other “vocational” domains such as art or research (Beaufa¨ys and Krais, 2005). 2.2.3. The organization of careers Far from being “natural”, the way a career unfolds – and in particular, the way it differs according to gender – largely depends on the organizations (Acker, 1990). Given the variety of modes of organization according to religion and denomination, most American studies bear on the comparison between specific denominations, seeking to discover the effects of the type of organization on male and female careers, particularly where recruiting is concerned. Two broad types of implementation which have definite consequences on the way an organization recruits can very sketchily be distinguished. In centralized groups, clercial occupations resemble the model prevailing in a bureaucratic enterprise: the minister, man or woman, represents above all the central authority, and, under the supervision of his/her hierarchy, is put in charge of a local section. The model clearly corresponds to the Catholic Church, Consistorial Judaism in France, and the Anglican churches (including the Episcopal Church). In decentralized organizations, which are in the majority in the U.S., the model is closer to that of a small business: the minister does not answer to a religious hierarchy, but to the men and women of the community, either because he/she founded the congregation, or because he/she was recruited directly by them to develop or manage it. The central authority is less vertical, it resembles rather a coalition of churches (in particular coordinating clerical training) whose common rules and regulations, less numerous than in the first case, are also less restrictive for the local communities. As to recruiting, in the first case, jobs are centralized or strictly controlled, the central authority having the last word on which candidate to appoint to the local community, and in the second case, recruiting follows the law of the market, and the central authority’s influence is limited to

16

Interviews carried out in Reform and Conservative French synagogues (ongoing doctoral dissertation).

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posting the job offer. It is a matter of general consensus that the second case is unfavorable to women, since they take longer to obtain their first job (Chang, 1997). A comparison between Presbyterians and Episcopalians showed that when recruiting is decentralized and controlled at the local level, resistance to feminization is more virulent (Sullins, 2000). These studies thus pose the same questions as research in the sociology of organizations, about the integration of women in bureaucratic structures compared to groupings of independent teams (Acker, 2006). Organizations also play a part in determining internal clerical hierarchy, which may be marked by gender differentiation, as women are over-represented in the “specialized ministries” or atypical careers. Some organizations have in fact explicitly confined women to specialized ministries during the first years of their ordination (Willaime, 1998), but there are also subtler ways to “dualize” clerical careers. For instance, in the Episcopal church, among the cohorts entering the orders in the 1980s – when the priesthood was made available to women – women, but also the older and least educated men, were (“by intention or not”) over-represented among permanent deacons,17 and the younger and better educated men over-represented in the priesthood. Encouraging alternative tracks towards ordination may serve to “divide the job supply in a manner that preserves as much as possible the concentration of young, male clergy in leadership positions within the traditional ordination track” (Nesbitt, 1993). But the mechanisms of market segmentation also lead to rejecting the idea that the deterioration of masculine careers and feminization are related. Paula Nesbitt or Patricia Chang show that no such chronological connection exists between the two; they even suggest that, in a general context of declining numbers of worshipers and increasing numbers of candidates to the ministry, feminization may have on the contrary protected men’s chances for advancement ([Nesbitt, 1997a] and [Chang and Bompadre, 1999]). 2.2.4. Impossible couples One of the major contributions of gender studies is to have unveiled the different consequences the interdependence between the private sphere and professional careers have for men and women. Clerical professions are no exception, even if certain mechanisms are more specific. Among American ministers and likewise among French executives ([Gadéa and Marry, 2000] and [de Singly, 2002]), marriage and number of children correlate with professional success for men, contrary to women, due both to the distribution of professional investment within the couple and employers’ preference for the pater familias model. At the same age, having the same work experience and training and belonging to the same religious denomination, a man’s married status correlates with a salary 20% higher compared to a bachelor’s. No such difference exists between married and unmarried women (Nesbitt, 1995; Chang and Perl, 1999). For a man, having children is associated with working in a larger community, while for a woman the opposite holds true (Cohen and Schor, 2004). All the studies show that, like female managers or union delegates, woman ministers and rabbis are more often single (either they never married or have divorced) and childless than their male opposite numbers. It is a widely accepted fact that the way domestic labor is shared by a couple is an important given, whereby the private sphere may contribute to slowing down women’s careers, and conversely to enhancing men’s professional availability. No studies on the division of domestic labor among couples where one partner is a minister exist. But Ruth Wallace notes that laymen and women often tend to expect from a female head of parish that she carry out certain tasks, such as

17 Opened up to women in 1970 (before the priesthood in 1977), the diaconate can be combined with a lay activity and then often goes unpaid. Ordination takes place at parish level at the end of a training period.

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the physical upkeep of the vicarage or even the church, something they would never expect from a man (Wallace, 1992). The job of minister, priest or rabbi is also one of those occupations where the separation between the private and public sphere is particularly tenuous. On one hand, the fact that part of the job consists precisely in proclaiming the norms of an irreproachable existence exposes one’s own private life to the communities’ criticism, and women in particular are laid wide open. Moreover, the obligation of being permanently on call complicates family plans and may become a source of tension; the more so as, frequently, the religious domain reproduces and gives credence to received, differentialist, psychological discourses on motherhood. Finally, the social and historical construction of the profession includes a specific role for the wife of a minister or rabbi (the rebbetzin): she must coordinate religious instruction and womanly activities, hospitality and sociability. Feminization complicates this, since this role has been constructed as female only. As it happens, this role was already problematic before, or at the same time as, women’s ordination was permitted, on one hand because of the professional demands of ministers’ wives (Malogne-Fer, 2005), on the other hand, because these women’s professional activities were developing in a contradictory context: as middle- and upper-class women’s participation in the job market intensified, the income and prestige of the theological professions experienced relative decline. From that point of view, the latter may be compared with professions in agriculture: farmers’ wives are no longer “family assistants” while such normative expectations weigh little or not at all on female farmers’ husbands. On the other hand, religious groups sometimes impose constraints concerning matrimonial status (bachelorhood or marriage). In the case of the French Polynesian Evangelical Church, women’s ordination was adopted in 1995 on condition there would be only one applicant per couple, in some cases forcing couples who had met at the seminary to choose which of them would be the minister. The obligation to marry sometimes weighs more heavily on young women, who more often than the young men are single when they enter and leave the seminary (Malogne-Fer, 2005). Conversely, in certain cases, ordaining a woman has been subordinated to her remaining single, as was the case of the first woman consecrated by the Reformed Church of France in 1949, Elisabeth Schmidt. Normative pressures from the religious organization and parishioners make the power relations within the couple a central issue in a minister’s career. Homogamy is the general rule, and in that case, congregations and seminaries alike tend to give precedence to the man when recruiting. What is at stake when negotiating mobility may be of more consequence for female than male ministers – particularly in the pioneering generation – for female ministers are usually able to be more mobile geographically, since they were less often sent to the seminary by their own community in the first place. 2.2.5. The weight of everyday interactions: justifying oneself in the face of resistance and its outcome Relatively converging discourses in a given denomination as to the difference in “ministry style” should not mask the fact that the difference is the product of social acts, whether day-today interactions (West and Zimmerman, 1987), or the result of one’s religious career – having one’s application repeatedly turned down does not produce the same effect on one’s professional career as an uninterrupted and upwardly mobile trajectory (Becker, 1985). There have been few ethnographic studies on the subject but all show how, for a woman and a man, the job of minister is built up over time and through interactions with the hierarchy and colleagues, but also with volunteers or employed personnel, church-goers, local politicians or journalists. Although,

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as we saw earlier, part of their leadership “style” is decided prior to ordination, women also encounter numerous hurdles downstream that hamper the advancement of their career. However, though such mechanisms in the construction of differences may lead a woman to practice her profession differently than a man and thus occupy asymmetrical positions, they also allow us to understand certain individual success stories, by showing how biographical resources and specific organizational configurations interact. One of the typical features of a pioneering career is the woman’s permanent need to justify her acts. Contrary to male ministers or rabbis, she must repeatedly explain to a great number of different people how she exercises her religious profession and why she is doing it as a woman. Whether or not the debates surrounding women’s ordination, and feminism in general, interested her to begin with, the fact she must justify her activity forces her to master the theological arguments on the subject. It especially implies practical constraints, forcing her to be constantly on the alert and self-conscious, careful of her appearance (the way she dresses, displays ritual insignia, makes up her face. . .), and of ritual observance – masculine theological language may no longer be appropriate – all of which profoundly influences women’s corporal hexis (de Gasquet, 2008). These constraints are a double-edged sword. On one side, averting or responding to demands for self-justification takes time and energy and may penalize a woman’s career by imposing extra requirements on her daily practice. On the other, it motivates her to acquire new competences (intellectual or militant), to seek support and new allies (with other women, with members of the religious elite of her denomination, with activists of other religious obediences), differently from what the men ordained at the same time as she are experiencing. It may become a distinctive sign, a source of visibility, especially for women involved in “women’s cause” in religion, or who publish exegeses or testimonials on the matter. To a certain extent, it may become a reason for promotion, in particular to the function of spokeswoman representing the religious community in the outside world. Concerning access to leadership positions, a survey carried out by the Episcopal Church suggests that the necessary resources to access those positions – here mainly that of bishop – are very different for the female pioneers and for the men. The latter dispose of sound, internal, theological resources, while women depend on more peripheral resources, a visibility connected to their activism, for instance. But, being essentially connected to their token status, that visibility in fact curbs their influence (Nesbitt, 1997b). One of the main inhibiting factors affecting women’s visibility and chances for promotion is their relative exclusion from informal male networks (Buscatto, 2008). When, for instance, a veteran or prestigious minister is asked to recommend a candidate for a new position, the name of a woman does not even enter his mind. For a woman to enter masculine networks is problematic, because it is difficult to make room for her without reconsidering the long-established sexual division of labor (clergyman/secretary, clergyman/teacher). This “trouble” is often expressed through gendered language. Among the negative images used to combat feminization figures, the sexual threat that permeates interactions between the women of the clergy and their male superiors. Against the backdrop of feminization, it is the women, not the men, who must constantly arbitrate between neutralizing sexuality and overplaying heterosexual femininity (Cassell, 2000). The discussions and remarks stirred up by women’s apparel (comparable to the rules on uniforms, jewelry and hairdos in the Army) are constant reminders of femininity, with the continuous risk of falling into the trap of sexualization. Even between women, daily contacts in the workplace are subject to permanent negotiation. Joan Cassell has shown how interactions with their male colleagues (but also with the women

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working under their orders) prevent female surgeons from exercising their profession in the same way as men. For instance, lacking the emotional support that nurses give to male surgeons, female surgeons behave differently with them compared to male surgeons – either they become more maternal or more authoritarian. Neither ministers nor rabbis officiate alone: they also have employees or volunteers for secretarial work, teaching Bible class, rehearsing the choir, preparing the service. As it turns out, men more than women are entrusted with the largest communities and most numerous staff. Women more often than men feel that certain men and women among their hierarchy or collaborators (clergy or laymen and women) have reservations about working with them. In such cases, when they get into the habit of dedicating more time to creating a consensus and avoiding conflict, it is less the result of a natural quality of theirs than a response to the resistance they come up against. Differences in managerial “style” may therefore be analyzed as being a byproduct of feminine strategies in the face of resistance to the feminization of religious authority; work on the gender of authority has yielded some very enlightening comparisons ([Laufer, 1982] and [Löwy, 2005]). 3. Conclusion Is the stained-glass ceiling really different from the ordinary glass ceiling? For certain authors, resisting feminization remains an obvious and legitimate part of what structures the religious domain, it is what distinguishes the stained-glass from the plain-glass ceiling. As noted by Jimi Adams, “stained-glass makes the ceiling visible”, contrary to organizations where the glass is supposed to make it invisible for most men and women (Adams, 2007). It is however not certain that the importance of visibility and of the legitimacy of resisting feminization is due to any specific quality of the religious universe, since a “sky of lead” has also been noted in the academic universe (Marry and Jonas, 2005). Existing statistical surveys, albeit limited to North America and certain denominations, and despite certain insufficiencies, give quite a precise idea of the degree of feminization in the pastorate and the rabbinate today and its evolution. As far as we know, the overall conclusions they have been able to reach about the glass ceiling can be transposed to other countries. On the other hand, they can only provide indications or at best, hypotheses, concerning the practical construction of differences in careers and professional praxis between women and men, or the concrete strategies applied by women in religious organizations. The most promising directions for future research are therefore those that center on the relationship between religious organizations and female ministers’ itineraries (the denominational studies accomplished by female ministers), thus shifting the focus towards the interactions that end up by producing a male or female minister. We can however, once again express regret over the relative lack of ethnographic work – that delves deeper than a single biographical interview with a female pioneer – that could provide a finer description of how the job of minister, conjugated in the masculine and in the feminine, evolves over time and through interactions with the hierarchy, colleagues, religious personnel, militant laymen and women, ordinary church goers, politicians and the media. Such studies would permit verifying hypotheses concerning “ministry style”, how the pastoral office is filled – imposing authority, choosing the liturgy, hexis. . . – according to type of organization, generation, the sociology of each parish, the social capital of the actors. Among research directions rarely taken, we might especially point to the way ordained women socialize informally, in sexually mixed groups or not, or to the effects of press coverage on the image pioneers give of themselves.

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We are sorely lacking in ethnographic studies at the level of the religious organizations themselves, as opposed to congregational studies (Ammerman, 1998): on religious elites (e.g. bishops, male and female theologians), the management of human resources in the seminaries and religious organizations, or the international circulation of policies to feminize the clergy. On this last point, a large number of religious groups belong to international federations with diverse and more or less restrictive modi operandi; it is also the case of a good number of female or feminist organizations that bring together women, ordained or not, of the same religious persuasion or not. The transnational nature of a religion may have effects not only on the diffusion (often a source of conflict) of women’s ordination, but also on the circulation of practical experiences. One might well ask if, given the existence of international organizations of woman ministers or rabbis, certain women do not in fact benefit from a greater number of international and interfaith networks than their masculine counterparts. References Achin, C., Paoletti, M., 2002. Le « salto » du stigmate. Genre et construction des listes aux municipales de 2001. Politix, la parité en pratiques 15, 33–54. Acker, J., 1990. Hierarchies, jobs, bodies: a theory of gendered organizations. Gender & Society 4, 139–158. Acker, J., 2006. Inequality regimes: gender, class, and race in organizations. Gender & Society 20, 441–464. Adams, J., 2007. Stained glass makes the ceiling visible: organizational opposition to women’s congregational leadership. Gender & Society 21, 80–105. Ammerman, N.T., 1998. Studying Congregations: a new handbook. Abingdon Press, Nashville. Barthez, A., 1982. Famille, travail et agriculture. Economica, Paris. Beaufa¨ys, S., Krais, B., 2005. Femmes dans les carrières scientifiques en Allemagne, les mécanismes cachés du pouvoir. Travail, Genre et Sociétés 14, 1–20. Becker, H.S.,1985. Outsiders. Étude de sociologie de la déviance. Métailié, Paris. Bendroth, M.L., 1993. Fundamentalism and Gender 1875 to the Present. Yale University Press, New Haven. Béraud, C., 2006. Les « intermittents » de l’Église. Modalités d’emploi des personnels laïcs dans le catholicisme franc¸ais. Sociologie du Travail 47, 37–54. Béraud, C., 2007. Prêtres, diacres, laïcs. In: Révolution silencieuse dans le catholicisme franc¸ais. PUF, Paris. A. Boubekeur. Féminisation de l’autorité religieuse en Islam de France. Mémoire de DEA, EHESS, Paris, 2003. Boubekeur, A., 2004. Female religious professionals in France. ISIM Newsletter 14, 28–29. Buscatto, M., 2008. Tenter, rentrer, rester : les trois défis des femmes instrumentistes de jazz. Travail, Genre et Sociétés 19, 87–108. Cacouault-Bitaud, M., 2001. La féminisation d’une profession est-elle le signe d’une baisse de prestige ? Travail, Genre et Sociétes 5, 93–115. Carroll, J.W., Hargrove, B., Lummis, A.T., 1983. Women of the Cloth: a new opportunity for the churches. Harper & Row, San Francisco. Cassell, J., 2000. Différences par corps : les chirurgiennes. Cahiers du genre 29, 53–82. Chang, P.M.Y., 1997. In search of a pulpit: sex differences in the transition from seminary training to the first parish job. Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion 36, 614–627. Chang, P.M.Y., Bompadre, V., 1999. Crowded pulpits: observations and explanations of the clergy oversupply in the protestant churches, 1950–1993. Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion 38, 398–410. Chang, P.M.Y., Perl, P., 1999. Enforcing family values? The effects of marital status on clergy earnings. Sociology of Religion 60, 403–417. Chaves, M., 1997. Ordaining Women: culture and conflict in religious organizations. Harvard University Press, Cambridge. Chaves, M., Cavendish, J., 1997. Recent changes in women’s ordination conflicts: the effect of a social movement on intraorganizational controversy. Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion 36, 574–584. Cohen S.M., Schor J., 2004. Gender variation in the careers of conservative rabbis: a survey of rabbis ordained since 1985. Rapport de recherche, Rabbinical Assembly, New York. Della Sudda M., 2007. Une activité politique féminine conservatrice avant le droit de suffrage en France et en Italie. Sociohistoire de la politisation des femmes catholiques au sein de la Ligue Patriotique des Franc¸aises (1902–1933) et de l’Unione fra le donne cattoliche d’Italia (1909–1919). Thèse de doctorat en histoire, EHESS, Paris.

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West, C., Zimmerman, D.H., 1987. Doing gender. Gender and Society 1–2, 125–151. Willaime, J.P., 1989. Profession : pasteur. Labor et Fides, Genève. Willaime, J.P., 1996. L’accès des femmes au pastorat et la sécularisation du rôle de clerc. Archives de Sciences Sociales des Religions 95, 29–45. Willaime, J.P., 1998. Les femmes pasteures en France : sociohistoire d’une conquête. In: Lautman, F. (Ed.), Ni Ève, ni Marie. Luttes et incertitudes des héritières de la Bible. Labor et Fides, Genève, pp. 121–39. Willaime, J.P., 2002. Les pasteures et les mutations contemporaines du rôle de clerc. Clio, Histoire, Femmes et Sociétés 15, 69–83. Zikmund, B.B., Lummis, A.T., Chang, P.M.Y., 1998. Clergy women: an uphill calling. Westminster John Knox Press, Louisville.