The Sequential Rise of Female Religious Leadership

Abstract

In his seminal work 'Ordaining Women,' Mark Chaves (1997b) highlighted the phenomenon of 'loose coupling' regarding female religious leadership: congregations often display inconsistencies between their stated policies and actual practices. Some congregations declare openness to female leadership but do not practice it, whereas others officially forbid female leadership yet have women in leadership roles. Our article identifies a theoretical mechanism producing this inconsistency. We propose that congregations typically first loosen their formal rules governing female access to leadership and only later allow women to occupy leadership positions in practice. This two-stage process results in a temporal lag between rule change and practice change, creating the observed 'loose coupling,' where rules are often more gender egalitarian than practice. Using two waves of the National Congregation Survey Switzerland covering all religious traditions, we test our theory both on the aggregate and the unit level and find strong support for it. Simulations further indicate that certain characteristics of the organizational population of congregations, such as their low attrition rate, may explain a large part of the lag between rule change and practice change.