Women with a Mission: Religion, Gender, and the Politics of Women
Clergy. By Laura R. Olson, Sue E. S. Crawford, and Melissa M.
Deckman. Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 2005. 190p. $37.50.
This book explores the role of women clergy in mainline Protestant
churches and the rabbinate. It is based largely on 54 in-depth interviews
conducted in 1998 in four U.S. cities (Indianapolis, Omaha, Milwaukee, and
Washington, DC), but also includes considerable material from a much
larger national survey of clergy. The authors are most interested in the
“political” role of their subjects and in how their gender
affects this role. They themselves define “politics” very
broadly, as “actions taken to influence collective decision-making
processes concerning resource distribution or the development and
enforcement of shared values” (p. 14). But they do not impose this
definition on their subjects. Instead, the clergywomen are asked about the
issues and concerns that motivate them, what kinds of activities they
consider most appropriate or helpful to address those concerns, and what
their own involvement has been in such activities. In both the interviews
and the national survey, around a third of the women indicated that gender
“in some way” limited her ability to participate in politics.
Three-quarters of the interviewees volunteered gender as a factor (either
an asset or a liability) for political activity, or as a reason why
particular issues were especially salient to them. But few mentioned
either their denomination or its women's caucuses as a factor linking
their gender with political involvement.