Women Bishops: what if...?

"...what I would love my colleagues in the Church of England to know is this: I achieve twice as much in a working week as I did before. Why? Simply for this reason: none of my mental energy is wasted justifying my existence, surviving bullies, fending off harassment, or anticipating sexist behaviour. I don’t have to think about whether I should speak more loudly or more softly to gain permission to be heard. I don’t have to worry about whether my clothes will be thought too feminist or too feminine, or second-guess myself all the time to work out how to gain the space and the permission to do the job I’m appointed to. I just wake up every day feeling good, go to work full of energy, work hard all day, and come home, most days of the week, still smiling. It’s not that I have an easy job – in fact, some of my colleagues tell me it’s one of the toughest jobs in the School. I preside over all manner of community disquiet, liturgical disagreement, theological debate, student heartache, and pastoral distress; the deadlines are tough and the work is never-ending. Some days I do a great job, and some days I just do OK. But there is a complete absence of the barrage of doubt, discouragement and personal attack based on something I cannot control: the gender I was born with.

I currently live in a kind of ecclesiastical limbo – I still belong to the Diocese of Ely in England, and have not relocated to a new church. How my future relationship to church will work out remains to be seen, and this is one of the matters that occupies me on my current walks along the beaches of Long Island Sound.
But I also sometimes try to imagine how different my first twenty years in the Church might have been, had the positive atmosphere I currently enjoy been more present in my places of work then. I wonder how much creative energy is being poured away even now within the ranks of the Church of England; how many women are working devotedly in parish or diocese, but having the quality of their work diminished by the demoralising atmosphere. How much energy, skill, spirit, morale and goodwill would be unleashed if the Church of England simply stood up to this negative treatment of its women, and said “no more”?

From Like the Wideness of the Sea: Women Bishops and the Church of England, chapter 3 

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