Religion: Ministers in Protestant/Mainline denominations
Moderate or Liberal Protestant/ Mainline (predominantly white congregations)
29.8% female senior clergy
According to the Pew Research Center, Mainline Protestants account for 14.7 % of total US Population, and 32% of Protestants in America.
According to Christianity Today, “female leadership is on the rise in many churches,” and “the number of female pastors in Protestant church leadership has doubled over the past ten years.”
Most Mainline Protestant denominations ordain and elevate female pastors. Religion News reported “Cracks in the ‘stained-glass ceiling’: In 2014, Chicago’s Fourth Presbyterian Church called the Rev. Shannon Johnson Kershner to become the first female solo senior pastor there, NYC’s famed Riverside Church elected the Rev Amy Butler Senior Pasot, and Foundry United Methodist Church in D.C. called the Rev Ginger Gaines-Cirelli. Between 2006 and 2015, Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori served as the 26th Presiding Bishop and Primate of the Episcopal Church in America – the first woman to be in the top role.
While Congregationalists and Universalists ordained women as early as the 1800s, most denominations did not allow women in the pulpit – let alone leadership roles – until the 1950s (United Methodist Church and part of the Presbyterian Church) or the 1970s (Episcopal Church, Reform Judaism and Evangelical Lutheran Church in America). Today, around 20% of Protestant seminarians are women, and the Hartford Institute for Religion Research report that 12% of all US congregations have a “female as their senior or sole ordained leader.” This is in line with the aforementioned National Congregations Survey of the ARDA, whose respondents report approximately 13.5% female senior clergy in their congregations. Hartford also reports that 10% of all Protestant congregations, and upwards of 20% of “mainline” or “oldline” Protestant congregations had women senior ministers.
Notably, full-time male senior pastors earn 27% more than similarly situated female pastors, despite the fact that 75% of female pastors hold seminary degrees, compared to just over 63% of the male senior pastors.
What will it take for women to get into the Power Percentage in Mainline Protestantism in the United States?