Its International Women’s Day today.
We had an interesting presentation on the Scottish Episcopal Church’s recent Gender Audit at Diocesan Synod on Saturday. Immediately after the presentation by Elaine Cameron, a bunch of men jumped up and started saying that they didn’t believe in positive discrimination.
They did sound rather threatened and terribly anxious.
I wonder why.
It has broken out online too, with Father Kenny saying this and Mother Ruth retorting thus.
I’m not joining this debate right now, but I might in the future. Instead, I think my contribution today is going to be to point people to an old sermon I preached about Saucy Salome. You can hear and read it here.
Well, I think you could argue that the *concept* of ‘positive discrimination’ is just and/or necessary, but the phrase itself leaves a lot to be desired (why not ‘redressing past biased hiring practices’ or similar?)
Interestingly, and despite their positions on other issues, I think conservative evangelicals would come out favorably in a gender audit, although arguably the whole division between e.g. “come along for some sausage in the Men’s Room” male-only pseudo-macho groups and “Women on Women” female-only events is intrinsically unfeminist (although there are lots of feminist advocates for certain female-only spaces of course).