My experience as a woman in in seminary came with a gut-level feeling that this space was not designed for me.
In seminary, I found myself staring at the reading list for another course. As usual, we were assigned several books written by white men; for the last book of the quarter, we could choose among a few options, only one of which was written by a (white) woman. As usual, I chose the woman-authored book. And I thought about how hard it was, sometimes, to be a woman in that academic space.
A couple years prior, when I first entered seminary, it felt like enough that my school had welcomed women into all of its programs of study since the 1960s. That’s a long time, and it’s part of the reason I chose this particular school. If my mother had wanted to become a pastor, she could have enrolled there as a young woman. At first this several-decades-long history of inclusion felt like freedom; after all, I had spent the previous eleven years deeply involved in a church that prohibited women from serving in certain leadership roles. Over time, though, the lingering male-centeredness of my seminary program began to weigh on me. (I dive deep into this in Nice Churchy Patriarchy: Reclaiming Women’s Humanity from Evangelicalism.)
As I’ve answered interviewers’ questions about women and religion and Nice Churchy Patriarchy, I’ve noticed myself saying things like: “I was surprised how difficult it was to be a woman in seminary, even at a seminary that’s fully committed to supporting women in ministry.” But I’ve been thinking about this more, and I’ve come to realize that of course it’s still difficult to be a woman in these spaces. Of course it’s still hard—even after many decades, even after hundreds or even thousands of women have walked this path before me—because the reality is that the roads were not built with us in mind. They were not shaped to fit us. So many different intricacies and twists and turns and building materials went into making these paths, all of which are more difficult to navigate for those who were not their original intended walkers.
It’s not easy to be the first. And, it’s also not easy, in its own ways, to be the thousandth. Not if the structures and systems have not changed at a very fundamental level.
I think it can be uniquely difficult to be the first of anything. The first woman in a school previously only open to men, or the first Black woman professor at a school that’s never had one before. It’s not easy to be the first. And, it’s also not easy, in its own ways, to be the thousandth. Not if the structures and systems have not changed at a very fundamental level.
Dr. Chanequa Walker-Barnes writes about her experience as a Black woman professor in the theological academy—a sort of “unicorn,” as she puts it. Life as a stark minority is difficult. People in this situation tend to be rendered both excessively visible and maddeningly invisible at the same time.
“The academy often desires the presence of Black women as faculty,” Dr. Walker-Barnes reflects, “without actually respecting our personhood.” I hear this, and I love the questions it raises. How do we respect and honor one another? And specifically, how can white people do better at respecting and honoring people of color for the fullness of who they are, rather than reducing them to statistics or optics? Can men do this for women?
On some level, when I waltzed naively into my first seminary class, I must have imagined it would be easier not to be a “first,” or “only,” or “unicorn,” but one of several hundred, or several thousand. And it is easier. There’s no comparison, for example, between my experience as a white woman seminary student at a school that’s welcomed women students for decades and Dr. Walker-Barnes’ experience as one of the only Black woman theology professors in the United States.
And yet, something about my experience as a woman in seminary was still so difficult. It was grating, disorienting and wearying in ways that I’m more fully understanding as I listen to people whose experiences of marginalization and unicorn-ness are much more intense than my own. There was still a gut-level feeling that this space was not designed for me.
Male theologians were still the default subjects of history classes, and I had to take an elective to learn about women in church history. I tried to take classes from as many female professors as I could, but the vast majority of my professors were still men. A few of these men went out of their way to encourage and support me and in my work and ambitions; even then, an awareness of my outsider-gender permeated our conversations. Have you considered applying to Ph.D. programs? I think you have the writing skills, the intelligence and the curiosity for it. And it’ll only help your applications that you’re a woman. Will it, though? Statements like my professors’, however well-intentioned, only look at one particular moment in a years-long journey of operating in a system built by and for men. They overlook the exhaustion of persisting—and, if one wants to be successful, constantly proving belonging and worth—in spaces where one’s presence is assumed to be an outlier.
Male theologians were still the default subjects of history classes, and I had to take an elective to learn about women in church history. I tried to take classes from as many female professors as I could, but the vast majority of my professors were still men.
No matter how many women graduate from my alma mater, things will never be equal until the whole school intentionally and thoroughly examines all the different areas of gender bias that still live there. I’m talking about overhauling the curriculum, hiring, promotion practices and course readings. New books, new lectures, new everything. And this is not only about seminaries, of course; one might imagine analogously profound changes in all sorts of schools, workplaces, government systems and other male-built, male-centered institutions.
At stake is both individual women’s ability to thrive in these spaces and women’s collective future ability to exist there at all. Not only is our sense of belonging fraught, but our very right to a place in these institutions is tenuous. Institutions’ ambivalence toward full gender equality keeps us on edge. Just as surely as we were once welcomed, we could at any point be rejected, if enough (still disproportionately male) power players change their minds. We see this in the Southern Baptist Convention, as leaders continue to fight internally over whether churches with female pastors can remain part of their organization. In a male-dominated system, women can easily find ourselves offered a position of leadership one day only to have it revoked the next. We can never be quite as comfortable, quite as certain or quite as lastingly at-home as our male counterparts.
The transformation we desperately need calls for more than a few decades of gradually grafting more and more women into environments that have not changed at their core. We need more intentionality; we need more drastic changes. And we need to build new spaces together, where leadership is shared among people of diverse genders—as well as races and other identities—from the start. Until then, it’s not easy to be a woman in these systems built for men.
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