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Often when women’s month rolls around, the focus predictably shifts to socio-political, economic, cultural and health issues.
The religious sector always manages to escape scrutiny, either due to it being granted sacred status or perhaps points to its perceived lack of relevance in contemporary society.
Whatever the reason, one cannot deny that religion still remains a very important fabric of society and the lack of female leadership in the upper echelons of the church could actually be doing a disservice to society at large.
Many of the sexist ideas that are held by men are taught in Sunday school and many of the basic teachings that are emphasized put women in a submissive role that many find difficult to get out.
There is a new branch of feminist theology growing and perhaps if we had more female pastors with a feminist interpretation of the Bible it could go a long way to dissolving some of these harmful stereotypes.
The lack of female pastors is even more disgraceful when one considers that the majority of the church population on Sundays is women.
But to be fair, it’s not like the Church is blind to these issues.
The Methodist Church of Southern Africa (MCCSA), one of the largest denominations in the country, have declared the 2015/2016 year as the Year of Celebrating the Ordination of Women. While the gesture is largely symbolic of its 40th anniversary where they took a decision to allow women to be ordained as ministers; it at least opens up a conversation.
According to a study conducted by Fanie Mkhwanazi and Tias Kgatla at the University of Pretoria, in 2014 the Methodist Church had 7.3-million members with 1059 ordained male ministers, while only 159 female ministers were ordained ministers.
In its most recent Yearbook, Presiding Bishop of the Methodist Church Zipho Siwa lamented the fact that they have only had one woman bishop. Only 17% of the Methodist clergy are women and 4% are Superintendents. Siwa admitted that the church still had a long way to go.
I’m not picking on the Methodist Church, they just have data available but I’m sure other churches would show a similar trend.
And I know many people will say that if women feel aggrieved by the skewed gender representation in their churches then they should not attend. But would you tell women not to enter or participate in certain industries because they are male-dominated? No.
But religion is not male-dominated, if women make up the majority of the church population it follows that the leadership should follow suit.
