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Women Pastors ‘Discriminated Against’ in Oulu |
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By News
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Tuesday, 01 December 2009 |
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Half of female clergy in Oulu face illegal discrimination in the work-place, according to a report in last week’s Kaleva.
The perceived discrimination was unearthed by a poll of women priests in the city conducted last month by the Church Information Centre. A similar survey in Helsinki found that less than three percent of female priests felt that they suffered discrimination.
According to the poll, women priests continue to experience discrimination in the organisation of ‘shift schedules.’ The Rev’d Päivi Jussila, of Tuira Congregation, told Kaleva that it is ‘common knowledge’ that shifts are organised in such a way that male, conservative priests who do not wish to work with women do not have to. This is ‘illegal’ under Church Law and under Finland’s ‘Equality Act’.
The Rev’d Satu Saarinen examined discrimination against women priests in Oulu in her 2005 PhD thesis on the subject. She found that some head priests in congregations persist in the tacit arrangement to avoid upsetting the conservative priests, some of whom have been priests long before women were first ordained in 1986.
However, other head priests had been abided by the law. This caused a conflict in 2006 when Karjasilta congregation head priest Juhani Lavanko organised a mass to be conducted by Saarinen and her conservative colleague Vesa Pöyhtäri. He refused to attend and has since left the congregation to become involved in the ‘Luther Foundation’.
This so called ‘Mission Province’ was founded in 2003 for traditionalists in the Nordic Churches who were thus barred from ordination. The Presiding Bishop of the Kenyan Lutheran Church, the Most Revd Walter Obare Omwanza, consecrated a retired Swedish priest, the Revd Arne Olsson, as the Mission Province’s first bishop.
The Rev Janne Koskela runs a Luther Foundation church in Oulu. His salary is paid by tithing rather than through church tax.
‘The Bishop of Oulu told me that if I wanted to be ordained by him I had to agree to work with women priests. I cannot work with women pastors because my reading of the Bible is that priesthood is for men" he said.
According to one Oulu female priest, who wished to remain anonymous, there are many times when she has been discriminated against at work or seen others treated in this way because of their gender.
‘I have basically not been allowed to do things because I’m a woman,’ she said. ‘A few years ago when they ordained a priest for the Sudanese in Oulu, there was a ceremony and communion and all the male priests there gave out communion. Only the women priests were not asked to.’
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