Women and the Church (WATCH) launched its annual report on “Developments in Women’s Ministry 2016” at a fringe event at the General Synod today. Speaking at the event the newly elected Chair of WATCH, Revd. Canon Emma Percy said “The WATCH report clearly shows that whilst much has been achieved there is still a significant way to travel before women have any degree of gender equality in the church.

Read the report by clicking HERE.

Yes we have women priests and bishops but recent appointments have shown that there continues to be a high disparity between the opportunity and prospects of male and female clergy.

From the latest available figures* whilst roughly equal numbers of men and women are ordained, only 27% are currently vicars or in more senior roles.

Women continue to be under-represented at senior levels within dioceses with 13 dioceses having no ex-officio women in Bishop’s senior staff and a further 22 that only have one women.

In 2016, ten people were made bishops but only three of these were women and sadly not one of them was appointed to be a Diocesan Bishop.

Today we publish a table showing the percentage of women in incumbent level appointments by diocese. With an average of only 24% of women incumbents across all the dioceses, many fall well short even of this low percentage.

So in summary, we keep WATCHing!”