On being the female-coded roster
When I looked up “pastor” in squarespace’s stock image search, this is the only image that didn’t show either (a) a man or (b) no people at all. The “deacon” pictures were just weird.
Women who are deacons don’t always experience the overt, nasty, and undeniable sexism and misogyny that is unfortunately normal for women pastors1. Once upon a time, I fondly thought that might mean we were a little better off.
I was wrong.
It only took a slight dive into church history, some added awareness of how traditions that aren’t as (theoretically) egalitarian as ours talk about women, and a little lived experience, and I discovered I’d accidentally signed up for the female-coded roster of the church2.
What does “coded” mean?
At its most basic, coded language is language that conveys more information than the word actually says. Because “doctor” already suggests “male,” we tend to add “female” when the person in the white coat is a woman. So “doctor”, linguistically, is a male-coded word. It can get a lot more complicated, but it can be that simple.
Why do I describe deacons as the “female-coded roster of the church?” Let me count the ways.
1) Deacons are mostly women.
Something like 82% of the active roster was female in 2018, the last year I was able to find numbers for (look for page 49). Women pastors are becoming a majority of their roster, too, but women deacons are a supermajority, and we always have been, and maybe always will be.
This first point is already enough, but since we’re here already…
2) Deacons do “women’s work.”
Deacons have specialties. Typical deacon specialties include education, working with children and youth, music, communications, etc. Sound familiar? These are all roles that women could do when women were not allowed to be pastors, that folks tend to assume are easier than they actually are, and that fit traditional “women’s work.” Deaconesses were doing a lot of this work long before women could be ordained in what became the ELCA.
3) We talk about deacons like we talk about women.
In church and in society, the default pastor is male. 3 In the ELCA, the default ordained deacon is female. You’ll notice this in our language: we say “female pastor” similarly to “female doctor,” but we say “male deacon” like “male nurse” or “male teacher.”
It goes further. If you’re at all familiar with the language used to explain and excuse complementarianism (which argues that God created and intends women and men for different roles, which are totally equal even though one is somehow always subordinate), you will notice parallels any time clergy start talking about the differences between the rosters. It gets “separate but equal” and “just happen to be suited to different (lesser) roles” very quickly.
4) We pay deacons like we pay women.
When the church studied compensation based on data from 2015, they discovered that women pastors (white women pastors, anyway) typically make about 90% of the compensation their male colleagues get. Around that same time, in my home synod, the compensation guidelines specifically stated that now-deacon compensation was… 90% of pastor compensation. On purpose. In writing. Even with the same level of education. And that’s still a pretty good pastor-deacon gap in the ELCA: some synods remain substantially worse 4 .
5) We treat deacons like we treat women.
I’ll just stop at three, or we’ll be here forever.
- I’ve never heard of a deacon telling a pastor what to wear 5, but pastors absolutely dictate deacon wardrobes6, not unlike congregations talk about (and dictate, if they can) female pastor wardrobes.
- It’s harder for us to use titles. I like “Deacon,” the semi-official (or anyway least controversial) Word and Service title option. But it's not on anyone’s menu or in anyone’s vocabulary outside the church. This mirrors the age old pattern of women not getting to use our titles, even when we’ve earned them.
- In our actual governing documents, only pastors are eligible for the highest clergy office, and the pastor is the default supervisor of the deacon if a congregation has both. So we’re parallel, but also constitutionally subordinate. Hmm.
There’s totally no gender dynamic to see, here, friends.
…but once you see it, it’s pretty obvious.
Please note: I’m not saying this is the be all and end all of the difference between the rosters. I’m not saying your experience isn’t valid and real if you haven’t experienced any of this. I am not even saying anyone does this stuff on purpose. I am saying the patterns are there, influencing us whether we see them or not. We might as well recognize what we’re working with, and join our pastor siblings in doing the work of doing better. Then we can all focus on the gospel, maybe?
1This conversation will use a lot of “women” and “men” and “male” and “female” language, because I believe the roles of pastors and deacons are trapped in that binary, and we need to see how closely we’re bound to it in order to get out. Nonbinary or otherwise gender nonconforming deacons absolutely exist, too.
2I mean specifically my church, the ELCA, which has two rosters and describes them as “parallel.” Possibly this applies to ordained deacons in other traditions, but that’s outside my experience.
3If you need evidence that this is still true, check out the cards available for Clergy Appreciation Month. If you find any to “the pastor and her family”, snap them up, those things are unicorns.
4The range is something like 70-100%, which is… kind of a big difference. Beyond the practical and justice implications, the dissonance is wild. Which is it, church? Am I worth the same? Less? A lot less?
5Look, I might occasionally have opinions about what my sister and my husband wear, but I don’t go around telling them. They’re adults. They dress themselves.
6No, really. We’re ordained clergy, but not everyone thinks that means it’s okay to wear clerical collars, and if “not everyone” includes your bishop or your supervisor, it may not be prudent to object.