Posted on 10/28/2021 8:03:58 AM PDT by SeekAndFind
More than half of female clergy in the Presbyterian Church USA have reported experiencing discrimination on the basis of gender, according to a recently released survey.
In 2019, PCUSA Research Services conducted a 110-question survey of 4,495 ministers, or nearly a quarter of the mainline Protestant denomination’s total number of clergy.
In the “Discrimination, Opportunity, and Struggles of Leadership Report” based on the survey responses, researchers found that 58% of women reported experiencing gender-based discrimination in the denomination. By contrast, only 4% of male respondents reported the same.
Additionally, 63% of female clergy reported experiencing any kind of discrimination, such as age-based or race-based, which contrasted with the 21% of male clergy who reported the same.
Women were also more likely than men to report ethnic or racial discrimination. For example, while 70% of Asian women reported experiencing race-based discrimination or harassment, only 12% of Asian men reported experiencing race-based discrimination or harassment.
The one exception to this was among white clergy, in which 1.1% of white women reported experiencing race-based discrimination or harassment, but 2.5% of white men reported the same.
Female respondents were more likely than male respondents to report struggling with various aspects of leadership, including “Recognition for leadership abilities,” “Offensive comments,” “Not having work validated by others,” and “Low pay.”
“On every category, women responded two to three times as often as men that they personally struggled with that aspect of leadership,” stated the report.
The survey also found that 71.1% of women younger than 40 reported “difficulty being accepted as leaders,” and 42% of women said they were “overlooked for promotion because of their gender.”
Sean Payne and Susan Barnett of PCUSA Research Services wrote on Monday that the overall report found that women, younger survey respondents and racial minorities all reported “experiencing discrimination or harassment more frequently than their counterparts.”
“While this conforms to what might be expected, the extent of discrimination reported may be surprising,” continued Payne and Barnett. “Racial or ethnic based discrimination or harassment is reported on a less prevalent basis than gender-based discrimination or harassment but is still significant.”
“Among respondents, 23% of Asians, 47% of blacks, 35% of Hispanic or Latino/as, and 21% of other people of color report experiencing race-based discrimination.”
The Monday study was the most recent entry in an eight-part series of PCUSA reports published weekly on research regarding various aspects of ministers' lives in the denomination.
The report was released a day after the anniversary of when, in 1956, Margaret Towner became the first woman ordained in the United Presbyterian Church in the United States, the predecessor denomination of the PCUSA.
Comment self deleted.
if you do not like women as clergy, is that discrimination?
or just an opinion?
can the women tell the difference, because there is one.
ditto
Female clergy — yet another dumb idea.
Confused. Are these the dykes complaining that nobody wants to hear their heresy?
PCUSA is woke so any discrimination is by their own. Believing churches have been fleeing them for decades.
Paul stated that because early churches still separated the sexes and women were asking questions of their husbands from across the “church”. It was disruptive.
What woman, and what church, would act otherwise?
The women woild experience gender discrimination if they’d stay at home In the kitchen. /s
Nothing more boring than a sermon from a dried up old lesbian.
They are finding out that their nice, liberal, virtue-signaling denomination doesn’t practice what it preaches.
Pathetic. Someone probably said something they didn’t like so, DISCRIMINATION!!!!! obviously….
My wife and I are members of a PCUSA church. We happen to have a very good minister at our church who was taught in the Reformed tradition*. While the denomination is very liberal nationally, the local churches choose their minister. I suspect in the case of these women clergy, churches in more conservative areas are not choosing them.
*A few years ago we had one who was not. Sometimes they sneak through the cracks and fool the selection committees.
The church that we attended left PCUSA because they refused to support their left turn. We kept our building too. Any church that bucked their left turn and tried to leave had their church confiscated. Turned out that decades ago, my church never signed their “agreement” that PCUSA owned the church. :-)
The preacher ladies are standing strong to disavow the Bible. It is an antiquated document written during a period of human rights violations. Indeed, many in the Bible were slavers. After all, the church is no longer about salvation through Christ. We live in an enlightened age when women rule. Even God is a female.
What book chapter and verse.”Paul stated that because early churches still separated the sexes and women were asking questions of their husbands from across the “church”. It was disruptive.”
Wow, a good thing you got to keep your building. It is sad when congregations become homeless. During the time in which we had a more liberal minister, we tried several PCA churches. We didn’t find one we really liked, and we have so many friends at our church that we’ve known for decades. Fortunately, he moved on and we had a very good interim minister and eventually the one we have now.
It also says that women shouldn't wear jewelry to church. That's because the pagans wore their wealth. Christians were to be apart and separate.
There's lots of interesting gems if someone cares to research.
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