Breaking the Stained Glass Ceiling: African Women's Leadership in Religious Organizations

Abstract

Women's access to leadership positions and authority in organizations and society is limited by social norms, organizational cultures, and structures collectively referred to as 'the glass ceiling'. The 'stained glass ceiling' refers to the same phenomena in religious organizations, the barriers that keep women from attaining leadership positions and authority in churches and other religious institutions. This special issue focused on African ascended women as leaders in different African communities, in Trinidad and Tobago, and the United States. The papers provide both historical and contemporary views of African and African descended women serving as religious leaders. John S Mbiti, the pre-eminent African philosopher noted that women served as leaders within African Traditional Religion (Mbiti 1988). Similarly, there are women serving within both mainline and African instituted churches in African countries. However, women do continue to be underrepresented in the highest levels of religious leadership, in a phenomenon named the 'stained glass ceiling' not only in Africa but other countries around the world (Adams 2007; Sullins 2000). The special issue focused on women breaking that stained glass ceiling, in terms of the strategies they use to survive and thrive as leaders in religious institutions - churches, religious schools and religious organizations, as well as the potential for employing spirituality in non-religious organizations. Beginning in West Africa, two papers focus on women's status in religious leadership in a traditional and a contemporary religious institution. The article by Harry Odamtten focuses on women's roles within the African Traditional Religious sphere of the Ga-Adangbe of Ghana. Odamten argues that women have always had roles that supersede the glass ceiling within the religious sphere, with some limitations. His fieldwork research elaborates on the various public and private religious leadership roles occupied by women in the Ga-Adangbe society. Looking at an African Instituted/Indigenous Church (AIC) in Nigeria that has grown to also have branches in other parts of the world, Toyin Oluwaniyi explicates the roles that women play in the Eternal Sacred Order of Cherubim and Seraphim (ESOCS). She demonstrates that, while there are a variety of roles that women play, the higher positions in the hierarchy are primarily dominated by men. In fact, the top of the hierarchy, the Baba Aladura is never open to women even the name (Baba means Father) indicates that is a position that is only open to men. The ESOCS has a different hierarchy for women, but it does not rise to the same level of power or have authority equal to that of the hierarchy for men. Moving east, Jane Wakahiu and Mary Salvaterra explicate the experiences of three women religious (nuns) from the Catholic Church in undertaking leadership and community development, after undergoing a leadership development program. The three from Kenya, Uganda and Tanzania utilize the lessons they learned and their enhanced skill set to develop their institutions and the surrounding communities. Wakahiu and Salvaterra argue that, leadership development activities may be necessary to enhance the competencies of women in positions of authority; they show that in the case of these three women, the training was invaluable to their continued effectiveness as leaders of faith-based institutions. Maggie Madimbo uses an autoethnographic approach to narrate her experiences in religious institutions in Kenya and Malawi. A native of Malawi and senior lecturer in a faith-based college, Madimbo narrates two critical incidents that impacted her development as a leader. The first incident occurred within a faith-based institution in Nairobi that trains leaders for churches and other Christian organizations, where she felt unwelcome and unsupported in her efforts to attain higher education. The second incident occurred in a church in Malawi, where the male hierarchy acted in a way as to discourage her from taking the pulpit by 'instructing' her on appropriate dress for the occasion. …

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