I just found this article by Linda Woodhead, originally published in the Tablet in November 2012, and reproduced on Thinking Anglicans. Linda Woodhead is professor of the sociology of religion in the department of politics, philosophy and religion at Lancaster University. Here's an excerpt:
from A woman’s place by Linda Woodhead
...What shocked me... was the way that insults and downright cruelty went unchecked and unchallenged. I remember a woman ordinand in an Anglo-Catholic college having her “pray for me on the day of my ordination” cards torn up and returned to her pigeonhole by fellow ordinands opposed to the ordination of women. And I remember how, at the ordination services I attended for some of the first women to be made priests, the presiding bishops told them not to celebrate out of compassion for their opponents.
That was 20 years ago. Surely things have changed? It’s true that half of all Anglican ordinands are now female, and a third of all clergy. Moreover, the gender equality scores (where 100 per cent would be perfect equality) have risen from 19 per cent in 2000 to 35 per cent in 2010. But progress has been spotty – in 2010 Blackburn and Chichester Dioceses could still only manage a score of 11 per cent. With the exception of a few high-flyers, women priests are often marginalised – in the least popular parishes, outside the positions of greatest power, and as unpaid or “non-stipendiary”. According to the Church’s own statistics, in 2011 fewer than a quarter of stipendiary clergy were female, compared with more than half non-stipendiary.
Anglican theology also remains a male bastion. In the university departments in which it is largely housed, women make up only 28-30 per cent of the staff, according to a recent study from Durham University (this compares with 57 per cent in languages, 48 per cent in law, and 27 per cent in maths). In fact it’s even worse, because not all of the 28 per cent are theologians, fewer still systematic theologians. Women trained in theology often move into areas which are more open to their talents, including practical theology, Christian ethics and sociology of religion.
Moving beyond the Churches, it’s easier to name prominent Catholic women in British society than prominent Anglicans. In planning a series of debates on religion in public life, my colleagues and I kept thinking of women with interesting things to say on the subject – and realising that they were nearly all Catholic. It’s not that Anglican women don’t make a vital contribution to society, but Catholics seem more willing to own their faith and speak openly about it. Ironically, it may be that the ordination of women in the Church of England has actually served as a brake on progress. By limiting the priesthood to celibate men, the Catholic Church has inadvertently liberated a large and well-educated laity to get on with living out their faith, independent of clerical constraints. By contrast, ordained Anglican women may find that wearing a dog collar means you can be put on a leash.
It’s not that the Church of England is as overtly authoritarian as the Catholic Church; it exercises control in more subtle ways. A prime one is the cult of niceness. You mustn’t be ambitious, and you can never, ever get angry. This applies to women more than to men: they must be patient and caring at all times. Any form of protest or demand is interpreted as pushy, unfeminine and unchristian.
The problem is compounded by a pervasive Anglican commitment to the importance of unity and inclusion. It’s this pursuit of the “common good” that has led the bishops to go to extraordinary lengths to make sure that those who oppose women’s equal treatment don’t feel excluded. They have, in effect, allowed the establishment of a Church within a Church – and this is what opponents of women bishops want to strengthen, contrary to all traditional understandings of the bishop’s role as guarantor of unity...