MORE should be done to encourage women into top clergy posts in our diocese, it has been agreed.

Diocesan synod members voted to rejoice in the ministry of women, but noted with concern the absence of women from the most senior diocesan clergy posts, and the small number of women in stipendiary clergy jobs.

Although there had been an improvement in the past two years, only 14.5 per cent of stipendiary clergy posts are filled by women – below the national average. In contrast, the number of non-stipendiary posts taken by women is 62 per cent, one of the highest in the country.

Representatives from the Bishop’s Waltham deanery also noted there were no female archdeacons, residentiary cathedral canons or rural deans, and no women on the bishop’s staff team at the moment. The Rev April Richards was rural dean of Petersfield and Canon Jane Hedges was a residentiary cathedral canon, but the former has retired and the latter moved on.

Proposing the motion, Peter Watkins, from St Peter’s, Bishop’s Waltham, suggested a working party should be set up to ensure better representation on women at senior levels, and that there should be a dean of women’s ministry on the bishop’s staff team.

The cathedral dean, the Very Rev David Brindley, told synod there had been strenuous efforts to appoint a woman to the cathedral clergy team. The last time a post came up, four separate women were head-hunted for the job, but none actually applied.

And the Archdeacon of the Meon, the Ven Peter Hancock, said: “It isn’t for the want of trying, but the bishop is constrained in various ways in appointments. In some parishes, there are simply no female applicants.”