At least the LGBT alliance hasn’t weighed on the lack of transsexuals among the 29 leading scientists from around the world attracted by federal funding to Canadian university positions. But women academics are certainly making no secret of their unhappiness and claiming discrimination.
Does anyone see a similarity to those would-be priestesses who draw headlines with their mock ordinations.
Here is the story in the Sun about the unhappy professeuses: http://www.vancouversun.com/technology/Exclusion+women+from+prestigious+university+appointments+reignites+battle+sexes/3081498/story.html
What’s mostly missing from the story is an interest in finding explanations other than gender bias. With nearly 60 per cent of university students being women, this seems to the complainers to be evidence that, I suppose, 60 per cent of university professors should be women abnd 60 per cent of research grantees.
First off: maybe the 60 per cent is an example of a pro-women bias. (Given that roughly 50 per cent of high schoolers are male). Does the B.C. government still spend money on programs to encourage female high schoolers to go to college? Isn’t it time for a program aimed at high school boys?
Second off: these are science positions; and it’s accepted as fact in these fields that more men excel than women, just as more men are abysmal than women. Women predominate in the middle of the Bel curve.
Third off: there are other gender differences which lead to women preferring non-research work to research work even in scientific fields. There is a fascinating book out recently, by Canadian psychologist and writer Susan Pinker, The Sexual Paradox: Men, Women and the Real Gender Gap, which goes into this.
Which is not say there might be other biases at work in academe. For instance, a bias in favour of researchers over natural teachers would lead to a male-dominated faculty interested in their own research more than in teaching. Women probably are better teachers than males, given Pinker’s evidence that they are more oriented to social ways of working in their discipline—to team projects, for example.
But already another voice has been heard, a male UBC prof says that most faculties he is familiar with prefer females in hiring. It’s their way of reversing the perceived preference of earlier years for males. His article is here:
http://www.ottawacitizen.com/opinion/real+discrimination+universities+against/3075557/story.html
The religious angle is clear. Women clearly perform as preachers and ministers as well as men. But Catholics and Orthodox maintain the priest is a type of Christ and Christ’s masculinity is not an accident but a part of the type. Maybe someone more learned than me could weigh in here with the theological point of a masculine God.
Of those who disagree, many are willing to accept the judgment of the Vatican, and others are not. Of these, the most disagreeable stage mock ordinations and ersatz masses with the priestesses as celebrants. The more dangerous , if less overt, for instance, in the St. Andrew’s Cathedral choir, emasculate the liturgy by altering the universal wording of the mass to remove references to God the Father and Son.
All these would-be reformers come from a belief in entitlement. The priesthood or the research position is a prize to be won for women, not a function to be performed for the benefit of knowledge or spirituality.
Steve Weatherbe
Vancouver Island Christian News 
The Lutheran Church Canada only allows some men to be pastors, largely on the basis of I Timothy 2:11-14, where in the context of worship, women are not to ‘teach or exercise authority over a man.’ Verse 13 puts this in the context of creation, thus rendering the passage universal, a part of the ‘order of creation.’ This passage therefore cannot be interpreted as if it were only part of the cultural context. Nor is the ‘order of redemption’ somehow superior to the ‘order of creation.’ I Corinthians 14:34-35, enjoining the silence of women in worship, remains relevant here as well.
Here’s an anthropological consideration about the ordination of women: it seems that when women begin to dominate the leadership of a group, the men simply lose interest and check out. This may not be to their credit, but it seems to be pretty observable.
Owen:
Whoo, sweeping generalization. I think the Baptists have held up alright with women pastors. Government departments led by women do okay–of course they are supported by taxes. Do female-led companies do well compared with male-led and would anyone be allowed to study this, let alone report it? Where’s the evidence, Owen?