Women in Theological Leadership
Across all our programs, we seek to support women in theological leadership to help correct a fundamental inequity in the academy, Church, and society.
Women in Theological Leadership bridges several of Scholar Leaders’ programs. Through this emphasis, we seek to advocate for women in theological leadership by organizing the Women’s Peer Leader Forum, a safe space for top-tier women leaders to counsel one another through the challenges of leadership and to develop as theologians; and by devoting special attention to women Leader Studies scholarship recipients.
The Women’s Peer Leader Forum hosts a cohort of seven women for five years. It has four goals.
- This group allows these women to encourage one another as they move from their PhD studies into full-fledged careers. To that end, the group emphasizes conversations about women’s positions in institutional and intellectual leadership.
- As some of the past generation’s challenges shift, these women consider how to navigate the new opportunities and challenges arising for women in theology.
- We have noticed that women who are new faculty and executives rarely have opportunities to do research or pursue intellectual professionalization because they are so overburdened with other demands. The group’s members challenge one another to seek and create these opportunities.
- Globally, we are seeing more groups emerging for women in theology – a wonderful development. But many of those groups are large and include all women at all levels of theological education. Thus, this small fellowship is a safe space in which these seven women can have honest conversations about the above topics that will then trickle outward into larger institutional spaces.