What is in Kelvin's Head?

Gender Segregation in Universities and Elsewhere

13/12/2013

Having been involved in university chaplaincy a couple of times, the issue of gender segregation in universities that has come up in the news is not a new thing for me to think about.

There have been a couple of news reports about issues surrounding Islamic groups in universities this week and quite a lot of comment, not least on the Today programme over the last couple of days on Radio 4.

Here are some thoughts.

Firstly, I think that universities have the obligation to ensure equality of experience to those studying (and working) within them.

Secondly, I’d say that I’m generally suspicious of single-sex gatherings. That doesn’t mean that I don’t think that they should ever exist nor that I wouldn’t take part or even lead such a meeting. Sometimes I think it makes sense for men to talk about being men and women to talk about being women. What I get suspicious of are times when power seems to be being manipulated in ways that ensure that a group of people have a worse experience of life than they otherwise would.

It was my experience when I worked in the chaplaincy at the University of London that we were occasionally approached by Isalamic women who wanted a place to say their prayers on a Friday and who enquired whether they could come to the chapel. My answer was always that everyone was welcome to pray in the chapel and it was the case that such women did sometimes find that place a place of prayerful welcome. Of course, I always asked why they could not go to the campus mosque which the University provided. (It didn’t, incidently provide the chapel, which was a Church of England building). The answer tended to be a shrug of the shoulders for it was clear to everyone on the campus that women were not welcome in the mosque.

My view is that the conversation about banning same-sex organisations on campus is a trickier one than it first appears. Universities have for a long time had single-sex structures within them though that appears to be receding. When I was at St Andrews University there were some single-sex halls of residence. I believe that there are fewer of these than there used to be. My only regret is that fewer students will have the enjoyable frissance of creeping around the wrong hall at the wrong time of day. However, that notwithstanding, I suspect that single-sex accomodation may well be becoming a thing of the past.

But there are single-sex sports clubs a-plenty and there are many Christian organisations in British Universities that have prayer breakfasts (why always wretched breakfasttime!) and similar opportunities for women. Christian Unions who have single-sex meetings might well be watching the developments surrounding Islamic students very carefully.

My own take is that any money or resources provided to students in Universities (including room bookings) should be given on the general presumption that such resources are for all students who are interested in the activity regardless of gender. I struggle to say that single-sex meetings should be banned but I think that a case needs to be made for any that happen. I don’t think myself that it is legitimate for a University to provide a Chapel that is only for Christians to use, a mosque that only male students can use or sports facilities that are dominated by one gender or the other. (To use binary gender shorthand that won’t please everyone who reads this). What people do in their own time and space is their own business. Men’s prayer breakfasts in private places (including rooms in halls of residence) don’t bother me so long as I don’t have to go to them. Public space set apart for one gender to use does bother me quite a lot.

We don’t have any single-gender organisations in St Mary’s and I’m quite glad it is so. It is the case that the clergy who celebrate on a Sunday at the 10.30 am service are all male for the first time in many years though that isn’t the case for all the services that take place here. I’ve also been surprised in recent years that we are not a congregation with any male flower arrangers. One might have thought that we were a congregation full of them, but no, apparently not.

I’ve been asked if I will consider co-leading a retreat for gay men sometime next year and it is an idea that I am actively thinking about. However, I’m also clear that it won’t come under the auspices of St Mary’s if I do it. I’ve benefited from such retreats in the past and I know that there are similar gatherings that lesbians have sometimes found very necessary. Interestingly, the LGBT group at St Mary’s has always been gender mixed in a way that at first surprised me. Should that group ever have a retreat, I’m sure that it would be open to both men and women, those who don’t identify comfortably as either and probably include a couple of straight people too.

These lines are complicated and more difficult to draw than at first appears on the Today programme.

Would you draw them differently to the way I would draw them?

gender-segregation, universities

7 responses to “Whither the Kirk?”

Pausing Place

25/08/2010

I missed last night’s programme, but I thought your comments were interesting.

In a sense, perhaps it’s unsurprising if the SEC is inwardly more positive about itself than the CofS. My take is that in the recent past, at least, the SEC started from a lower common denominator, not being the “local” church in the same way as the Kirk, and so it doesn’t have to contend with others saying of it “look how the mighty have fallen” in quite the same way.

As to the health of the Kirk (and the SEC for that matter), I think we need to reflect on our self-perception and to consider carefully the points and places in which a dying church (congregation or denomination) should be allowed to die gracefully, and the ways in which we might see new life emerge from the rubble.

As a young(ish!), relatively new Christian I have seen examples of (both urban and rural) SEC and Kirk congregations where there are few signs of new growth, little to draw in younger (under 50 year olds, to pick a random-ish number) new folk, and much to sustain negative preconceptions of church as boring, irrelevant and so forth.

We as a faith community need to get much better at stepping up to the mark in our creativity and engagement with our society. The sad truth is that most young adults do not know and have not heard about Jesus Christ, and unless we engage with them in ways culturally relevant to them, and which do not presuppose previous knowledge (too often taken for granted) they never will.

It troubles me, but I do think it’s true to say that in the SEC and in the Kirk we have a church sustained by the traditions and cultural reference points taught to a previous generation. Culture has shifted radically, with the result that the same will not be able to be said in 20 years time.

Our challenge is clear. Whether the Kirk and the SEC can step up to the mark to address what it means to live out the Great Commission in the 21st century is less so.

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Cal

25/08/2010

I didn’t really understand who this programme was aimed at, or even what its aim was.

Yes, numbers have fallen, but perhaps the small number of people who remain are there because they actually want to be, not because it’s the done thing on a Sunday morning.

And personally, I rather like the idea of a church “sustained by traditions”. Clearly the church has to be relevant to modern society, but in abandoning the traditions of worship then you lose the centre of why the church exists in the first place.

There was something very Presbyterian about the programme with its “we’re doomed” mentality. I find the SEC generally more positive in outlook.

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John

25/08/2010

The only book the presenter seemed to have used in his research was ‘The Death of Christian Britain: Understanding Secularisation 1800-2000’ By Callum G Brown – indeed Callum Brown was one of the speakers. The thesis of this well argued sociological study is that “quite suddenly in 1963 something very profound ruptured the character of the nation and its people sending organised Christianity on a downward spiral to the margins of social significanceâ€. That something he identifies as new media, new gender roles and a moral revolution which has dramatically ended peopleâ€™s conception that they lived Christian lives.â€ It could be said to have happened as â€œsex beganâ€ between the end of the Chatterly ban and the Beatles first LP as the poet Philip Larkin so famously put it.”
To balance this statistical decline the programme flagged up some of the “church without walls ” iniatives in a lame sort of way. All in all a most unsatisfactory programme that only told half the story.

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Kenny

25/08/2010

Good crit Kelvin. My reflection at the end of the programme was, “Lord, we visited this stuff over 30 years ago, and have come out of it stronger and better Church in the SEC.” Hopefully, we stopped longing for ‘the good old days’ a long time ago!

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MartinRitchie

26/08/2010

I thinking “Pausing Place” makes a good point about needing to creatively engage with society. From my own experience of working with a CofS congregation, this creative engagement is a weak spot for many.

As a counterpoint to the programme, interesting to note in the latest “Life and Work” a very positive article about a growing CofS congregation in Stornoway – and I mean really growing! So not all doom and gloom, and I’m sure there are many more examples of bright spots, just as there are in the SEC!

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Graham Vahey

28/08/2010

If the C of S disappeared completely we would be at a loss. During the dark and bleak years of Thatcher’s reign she refused to visit Scotland for 5 years. When she did she expressed shock that we had Royal Regalia and ordered it to be removed immediately for safe-keeping to England. Her ‘Sermon on the Mound’ is now historical for its condescension to the Scots. She was none too pleased to be handed two reports on poverty in Scotland by the powerful Church and Nation Committee. Indeed, it was to this Committee that the population turned to for a moral lead during Thatcherism. When James VI (‘Jamie the Saxt’) became James I in England, the population turned to senior Scottish earls for a moral lead. Unfortunately, the Piskie Church does not give a moral lead in Scotland, apart from the work of the Scottish Constitutional Convention in the recent past. The RC Church does pronounce on moral issues. Could it not be conceivable that all the major Churches could unite in a Committee to pronounce for Scotland on moral issues as the Church & Nation Committee once did?

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Aldous N. Gaiters

01/09/2010

Speaking as a Nonjuror myself I am sure the SEC has a right to a moral voice in Scotland. Taking the US daughter church of the SEC as a model you could see where the fissures would appear. There is room for a modern liberal Christian voice, but even I an old Liberal myself, would have to fear that such a voice might appeal to only a select few.

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