Religion's Male Preference: Let's Be Honest

Bravo to Sheryl Sandberg risking to live Full of Herself!

I am proud of the controversy stirred up by her best selling book “Lean In”. If you’ve seen her famous TED talk, you’ll recognize much of the book. It expands from those points and offers pages of well researched studies and statistics.

I am so pleased about the fray the book has pulled from the mythic tapestry we have laid over the subject of gender equity. We need some messiness around the topic of what it is honestly like for women in the work force, and in the structures and traditions of our society.  For too long young women, middle-aged and older, have ignored the reality that today, still, in 2013, women are less valued than men. It’s time we talk about it, even when we don’t want to.

This is not a new idea. In fact, it’s knowledge we’ve had and swept under the rug by the very gender stuck with getting rid of dirt we don’t want to see: women. In agreeing to do the clean up for Patriarchy, women have ourselves to blame for being stuck with our hand on the broom handle: and not because we can hop on it and fly away.

In reality, our wings have been clipped, to keep women solidly on the ground of undervalue and underachievement and we have been part of making it happen.

In 1991, after I returned from serving 23 months in the United States Peace Corps, I accepted a job at my alma mater, a university in northwest Washington as Director of Student Activities. Among the speakers we hired during that time was Naomi Wolf, author of the then famous “Beauty Myth”.

As Ms. Wolf sat around a lunch table with me, female faculty and students, she told us about her next project: Women in Leadership and the lack of young women college students who wanted it. Traveling the nation, speaking and listening to women, she was shocked and dismayed to discover that the majority of women had little to no desire to put themselves out as leaders.

I listened with rapt attention. I nearly had to sit on my hands so that I wouldn’t jump up screaming “I want to! I want to lead! I’ve wanted to be President since grade school! I want to be that leader! I have always wanted to be the leader! I do! I do! I do!”

I did and I didn’t. I was President of my university student body; I was a Peace Corps Volunteer in West Africa; I worked in the Clinton Administration; I became an ordained woman pastor. In all these professional roles I reached for justice, founded organizations that sought equality and changed the governing rules of institutions. I have been a leader; strong, smart, assertive, demanding, committed and charismatic. And I have been crucified for it, by men and women alike.

I was first told I had been crucified on the altar of religious patriarchy while living as an intern in Jerusalem. My American supervisor was a frightening, small and insecure man who despised me the minute he greeted me and my husband at the airport. As months went by it became clear that not only would he not be one of the supportive male mentors Sandberg had throughout her career, but the opposite. His goal was to tear me down. Because of his blatant misogynist actions, I was removed from my position in Israel. As one woman said, “You’re being crucified for being a strong, smart woman who refused to take shit.” 

Through my ten plus years as an ordained pastor, I learned that there is a religiosity of male preference and female diminution; God ordained the hierarchy of men over women. This moves the discussion beyond Sandberg’s assumptions, stereotypes and traditions and into a far more complicated source of the inequity: the divine. God, via Bible and other religious holy books, is understood as elevating men and placing women under their rule, while at the same time warning of women’s sexual prowess and a need to be governed, directed and protected by men. As a result, if a woman pastor is outspoken, ambitious, assertive and insists on remaining a woman, being the powerful woman leader “Lean In” hopes for, becomes a religious struggle.

I love being a woman. I love my red lipstick, high platform shoes and pencil skirts. I like my curvaceous body and long, dark curly hair. As a pastor, I didn’t want to tone down or reject my sexuality. I enjoyed the power of my sharp mind and charisma and my easy ability to speak, motivate and inspire. I was and am a natural leader and the young woman who could barely contain herself in the presence of Naomi Wolf didn’t contain it as a pastor, which led to the end of my leading in organized religion.

In the church there were not male colleagues who gave me a hand up or encouraged my voice. There were not women who joined me in my quest to create an equal place for honest female leadership in the church or in exploring gender neutral language and naming of the divine. In the church, the type of powerful woman I was and would not reduce, was not welcomed. The divinely ordained teaching that women are beneath men is ingrained deep in our collective psyche and is the root of all the weedy blossoms of gender inequity. 

“Lean In” nudges up to the truth that most women who do want to be leaders don’t often make it, but it never fully digs down deep as to why. Religion is not mentioned once as a part of the problem. Sandberg gets a lot right in “Lean In” and still, there is much she does not even broach. Finally, it needs to be said that women do want to lead. There are other women, young, middle and old, who like me, can barely contain our desire to do so. The reality is, however, that the “right timing” or “well placed mentors” along the career route that Sandberg experienced, are rare. For many of us who are in male dominated professions, being a strong woman leader can be the death knoll of our very intention to do so. Simply wanting to be the woman leader is not enough to make it happen, and not only because of conflicts between motherhood and marriage, but because of the deeply seeded belief that women should not rise so high.

We need this book. We need this discussion. We need to disagree, feel uncomfortable and courageously look at our complicity in the reality of what “Lean In” reminds us: women are not equally valued, do not have equal opportunity or choice. Together we need to unearth the roots of Patriarchy, face the truth of religion’s role in it, and move forward to replant the ground of our practices with seeds of balance and equity.

Dear Sister,

I know you. I am you. I have lived with you, sat and counseled with you. I have sung next to in choir and encouraged you from outside the dressing room at the clothing store. I have listened to your pain, the stories from childhood that continue to haunt you. I have written prayers for you, appeals to the healing balm of truth that you are good, you are treasured and you are valued. I was with you when the wounds from long past flared; when your dad ignored you and the kid in class called you fat or when that boy told another he wished you were as good looking as your sister. I touched the hurt deep inside and together we took it out, learned from it and found ways to reimage it with love. Self love. Love for you from you. Love of all that you are because you are good. You are a goddess woman.

Our culture, traditions and religion don’t make things easy for girls and women. The idea of male preference, male domination and male superiority leaks from nearly every pour of our institutions, organizations and systems of belief.

Just today I heard a story about a woman serving in the military, raped by a colleague serving in Afghanistan, ignored and re-victimized by the authorities. The perpetrator went unpunished. The report listed many more similar incidents.

Media attention clamors over the group of all male religious leaders who have gathered together in Rome to elect another male leader to the position of highest and holiest, to lead a world-wide community of followers, more than half of whom are women.

In religion or out of it. Claiming the name of feminist or rejecting it. Loving traditional worship and music or wanting alternative options, it doesn’t matter. Women yearn for something more… for a deeper, intimate and consistently loving connection than what we can find in the options our male-driven society offers us.

We need another way. I know. I am one of you. I have been with you, walked, listened, taught and counseled you.

We need another option. A way to add to the religion we love. A different set of poems and prayers to integrate with those from our tradition. An alternative voice offering information, energy, challenge and ideas of truth, beauty, love and life.

In or out of religion, in love with the church or healing from wounds inflicted by it, living by reason or faith – women need an alternative.

Come Circle-Up with other Women and begin the journey. Give me a bit of your time and I will abundantly gift you with beginning steps along the new way, to apply to your daily life and to remind you, always, how good, valued and needed you are.

For Northern California Women! Circle-Up with me and other women next Saturday, March 23rd in Lafayette, 10 – 2pm. You will be received, dear sister, with a gracious welcome, beautiful space, nurturing ritual and inspiring, mind-enriching content. We will be together in safety, self care and celebration of women. For this Saturday, you are my special guests. Please do invite friends and family to come along. Over the next two months, these workshops will give opportunity for filming, interviews and giving voice to the too-long silent desires of women.

Circle up with me individually. Come with me on guided meditations written just for you. Speak openly in a safe, nurturing, one-on-one environment that is totally built for your good core blossoming. Watch your life shift with self-love and respect, clearer desires and hopes and concrete ways to get there.

Circle up with other women and join your beautiful, wildly competent and imaginative minds with theirs. In a MasterImagine group, I create ritual practices especially for the group, its focus, goals and hopes of what needs and wants to be created. Groups can range from parenting, finding a balanced life, self-love and love for others, finding and releasing passion, to professional satisfaction and purpose.

Create your own Circle Up of Women. Use meditations written especially for women gathering together, watch short video blogs of teaching, leading and wondering together and spend time in your own circle reaching further in and discussing. Engage with the ritual practices for a new way of a feminine-spirit life and discover how to integrate them with your traditional religious practices.