https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8067-6219
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Benjamin R Knoll, Preacher Woman: A Critical Look at Sexism Without Sexists, by KATIE LAUVE-MOON, Sociology of Religion, Volume 83, Issue 2, Summer 2022, Pages 289–290, https://doi.org/10.1093/socrel/srab063
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This book opens with a paradox: why do organizations that are explicitly committed to gender equality continue to produce leadership outcomes that are clearly unequal? In other words, how is it that well-intentioned individuals can unintentionally perpetuate unequal patterns in organizations and communities? In Preacher Woman: A Critical Look at Sexism Without Sexists, Dr. Katie Lauve-Moon takes a deep dive into this question using religious congregations as a case study. Specifically, she uses a mixed-methods approach (quantitative surveys of congregants and seminarians combined with qualitative ethnographies and interviews of congregants and clergy) to analyze how the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship (CBF) continues to have a male-dominated clergy structure despite having gender-inclusive policies in its hiring practices ever since it separated from the Southern Baptist Convention in 1991.
Preacher Woman examines several different aspects of congregational life and gender patterns in the CBF. One chapter focuses on clergy hiring practices and reveals that policies that are ostensibly gender-neutral can still result in sexist outcomes. For example, a hiring committee requirement that clergy have previous experience as a head pastor, gender-neutral on its face, still unintentionally privileges men given that women are much more likely to serve as associate pastors than senior pastors in most CBF communities (and in Mainline Protestantism more broadly). Another chapter examines sexualized norms about what women clergy wear and how they present themselves (hair, makeup, etc.) to reveal implicit ways that congregant expectations unequally place burdens on women clergy compared to men clergy. Another chapter details the disproportionate tension that women clergy face in that they are often expected to be feminist-but-not-too-feminist in their preaching and theology.
