Gender Equity in The Salvation Army

From its beginning, The Salvation Army has been committed to gender equality. And in many ways, we have lived up to this commitment, and our women officers have flourished as ministers and leaders. But in some areas, gender inequity persists and there is more work to be done.

On this episode, Commissioner Lee Graves, territorial commander for Canada and Bermuda, and Lt-Colonel Wanda Vincent, gender equity officer, have an honest conversation about where we’ve succeeded with gender equity and where we’ve missed the mark. And we look at the concrete steps that are being taken to ensure that every officer can fully live out their calling.

Learn more about the Canada and Bermuda Territory's gender equity work: Salvationist.ca/gender-equity

Watch the video version of this episode on our YouTube channel.

Transcript

Kristin Ostensen

This is the Salvationist podcast. I'm Kristin Ostensen. From its beginning, The Salvation Army has been committed to gender equality. As the 1895 Orders and Regulations for Staff Officers of The Salvation Army states, “No woman is to be kept back from any position of power or influence merely on account of her sex. Women must be treated as equal with men in all the intellectual and social relationships in life.” It was a radical position then—and even still now in some parts of church. And in many ways, we have lived up to this high calling, and our women officers have flourished as ministers and leaders. But in some areas, gender inequity persists and there is more work to be done. That’s why today’s conversation is so important. On this episode, we welcome Commissioner Lee Graves, territorial commander for Canada and Bermuda, and Lt-Colonel Wanda Vincent, gender equity officer. We take an honest look at where we’ve succeeded with gender equity, and where we’ve missed the mark. And we look at the concrete steps that are being taken to ensure that every officer can fully live out their calling. 

Hi Commissioner Lee, and hi Lt-Colonel Wanda, and welcome to the Salvationist podcast.

Wanda Vincent
Thanks so much for having us today, Kristin. Really appreciate that.

Lee Graves
Yeah, it's wonderful to be here and be part of this conversation that's so important. So thank you, Kristin.

Kristin Ostensen

Absolutely. So to start us off, I’m wondering if you can talk about what gender equity means to you. What does it look like?

Lee Graves

Well thank you. An important question and I think we all need to consider this very very carefully. But first of all I want to say thank you to Colonel Wanda and to the committee, the Gender Equity Committee. This is such an important piece of work that is being undertaken on behalf of the territory. It’s really a piece of work that is sponsored by the Spiritual and Denominational Affairs Board. And, just prior to my coming home, I think it was almost 50 recommendations that were made to that particular board. And as a result of that, the committee continues to do its important work, methodically working through those. So thank you very, very much, Colonel, for your good work on top of a very, very busy appointment for you. You’ve taken this extra responsibility. Just to remind that we have 294 women officers in the territory and we have 240 men officers in the territory, which gives us almost 530 and a bit officers, all of whom we’re so very, very proud. This gender equity question that we need to continue to explore and unpack and ensure everybody is aware of and understands is really about the fair treatment, and not only for women, not only for men, for all, for both. It’s really, really important. And, to the extent possible, that we listen to the needs of people, that we release and we empower these good officers who have given their lives to be engaged in the ministry. The Apostle Paul, he speaks about equity really, really well for us when in Galatians, Chapter 3, in the 28th verse, he talks about this. He says there is neither Jew nor Gentile, there is neither slave nor free, there is neither women nor men, but all, all in the body of Christ are one in Jesus himself. And so we claim that, we celebrate that. We say yes to the Scripture, to what Paul has said. And we want to make sure that every individual within the context of the movement we love and call The Salvation Army have equal access to things like education and training so that life itself can be enriched, which ultimately is going to support this important movement work that is ours. And, we celebrate. We want people to be the best leader they can possibly be, wherever they are found in their appointments today.

Wanda Vincent

Yeah. Gender equity for me, like for Commissioner Lee, is always embedded in Scripture. And so I often go to God’s original design for humanity. Genesis 1:27-28: “God created male and female in his image.” So we are all image bearers of God and he created us equally for a purpose. He gave the man and the woman equal responsibility to care for the world. So it’s about shared leadership, it’s about having ourselves in the plan of God from the beginning. Of course we know that the fall came and so God’s original design was distorted and broken. And since that time, I believe God has always been calling us back to restore his original intention. And of course, part of the consequences of the fall is that women have not always been treated the same as men. And so when it comes to gender equity, we want to make sure, as Commissioner said, that we reinforce the fair treatment of everyone. Now, sometimes that means equal opportunities, equal resources are available, and sometimes it means additional support is given, particularly for women, for example, when they’ve not started on the same level ground. And so sometimes it can look both ways. And we want to help to correct some of the historical wrongs that have happened and some of the ways that we’ve missed the mark, even though we’ll talk about how we’ve done a lot of things really well, and we continue to do some things really well, but occasionally things have not been done well and there’s been hurt caused. And so gender equity helps us continue in an improvement plan towards restoring God’s original intention for all of us. Yeah.

Kristin Ostensen

Well that is a great lead into my next question, which is that of course, The Salvation Army was built on a concept of empowered women and men sharing equitably in spiritual leadership. And I wonder if you can talk about how we’ve done that really well over the years, but also, as you say, how have we missed the mark in some ways?

Lee Graves

I think it continues to surprise us that there has been this struggle over the years on this subject of gender equity. How can that be? Particularly when we consider that William and Catherine themselves, in imagining this great movement and under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit being part of raising up what we now understand and love as The Salvation Army today, their starting point was to realize and to acknowledge and really to, in a very practical way, say to everybody, “Yes, women and men are equal in ministry.” And really culturally, if we think about it way back then, it was making a leading a statement to the world, living out Scripture in that way. And Booth himself had the foresight to embed in the deed poll, the foundational legal document of The Salvation Army, way back at the beginning, that women were to be empowered and released and to be given authority to serve. So why has it been that we’ve had this journey where we’ve done well in some areas, but we’ve done terribly in other areas? And I think it’s important to acknowledge that we have hurt some people over the years. We want to acknowledge that I think, today, as well. The Commission on Officership that was really received in the year 2000-2001, really began to dig into this question of gender equity again, to ensure that all around the world, in this territory, we’re thinking about empowering, releasing, ensuring that there was fairness as we look at our officer pool. And even General John Gowans, the late General, when he was General not so long ago, he made this interesting statement. He said, “Really, as we look at our officers around the world, that we would get away from male and female and recognize and celebrate that we are servants of Jesus Christ, called up, raised up by him.” And so we ought to be given our place within the movement. There’s a beautiful little phrase that says this, “In the will of the Lord, I have a place to stand. In the will of the Lord, I have a call to rise. And in the will of the Lord, I have a right to lead.” And every officer of The Salvation Army has a right to lead. We need to pray and help and support and resource so that every officer is the best officer they can possibly be, and the best leader they can possibly be. Yeah.

Wanda Vincent

For me, I see lots of ways that we have done well with gender equity over the years. I celebrate the fact that it’s never been an issue that a woman leader in The Salvation Army, whether single or married, has been able to be a preacher. So a woman in the pulpit has been in our DNA since the beginning. And that in itself, we set ourselves apart, I will say, from some other denominations that don’t do that. And so I celebrate that piece. I celebrate the piece that we’ve been progressive in the demonstration of gender equity. It wasn’t probably too many years ago, and Commissioner Lee, you would remember this maybe a little even more than me, when a woman officer was not always addressed by her rank in the same way that her spouse, the male officer, was. There were times when she was often just referred to as “Mrs.” or then it came Mrs. Captain or Mrs. Commissioner or Mrs. Whoever. Whereas today now, for the most part, we are certainly organizationally and systemically we are each treated as equal. So given equal ranks because we are trained equally. And so there’s been progress in that area. I think about something as recent as the change in the maternity or parental leave, so policy. So we’ve seen progress in policies where now if a married couple has a child, then they get to have parental leave the same as if they were working in any other workplace. And so that’s progress. So I celebrate that we have done that well. Commissioner Lee mentioned education and development. I can give a personal example of 20 years ago, I was asked to go to ICO before my husband had a chance to go. He went six years later. And that was at a time when it was probably more normative for the man to go before the woman. But in our case, the divisional commander at the time, there was an opportunity to go and I was asked to go. So again, that’s progress. Another personal example is a few years later, Morris and I were asked to take appointments in a division. And one was going to be the AC and one was going to be the divisional youth secretary. We had consultation about that. They met with us and asked, “Which of you do you think fits the AC role? Who fits the DYS role?” And so we were able to speak into that. I see that as progress over the years and I think there’s more and more of that happening. The challenge, I think, and where we’ve missed the mark is that that has not always been consistent. So I know that not every person’s, not every officer’s experience has been the same. So I don’t know why that is all the time, but sometimes I hear stories, even now, when there’s a married couple and the male spouse has the conversation, whether it’s with his area commander or supervisor, talking specifically to him about his gifts and skills and giving a proposal for an appointment for him, but the female has not had the same respect or the same amount of consultation with her. And so that’s where some of the hurt comes in, and that’s where some of the places where we’ve missed the mark. I think sometimes we’ve also missed. the mark, maybe in providing that additional support when it’s needed to younger women officers, so that both male and female, as they grow, even early on in their officership, that the development piece starts then. And then in that way, neither one gets missed as appointments— as they progress in their officership. And so those are some of the places where we have missed the mark. Sometimes we’ve also missed the mark with the fact that single women officers- there’s two pieces to this, so on the one point, I’ve heard many times that we’ve had many more single women be put into positions of senior leadership or reserved appointments than we have married women. And that’s often been one of the issues that arises. The other piece of it, though, is that we can’t forget that sometimes single women officers have their own challenges as well. And I’ve heard stories of where a single woman goes into a place and because she’s single and a female, then there’s two additional barriers that she has to overcome. And she sometimes has been stigmatized a bit like the phrase, “Oh, you're just a young girl.” And so some of those assumptions, some of those stigmas happen. And sometimes we haven’t always addressed them efficiently. Yeah.

Lee Graves

I just want to add a little bit because I think these are such important points. And we can go back far enough, some of us in this conversation go back farther than others, but I remember the day when in a marriage, it was the husband that received the allowance, not the wife. When the husband received the call about the appointment and the, Lord forgive us, the divisional commander wouldn’t speak to the wife. I mean, these were our realities and so we’re truly becoming- I want to celebrate, I think we’re listening better, we’re learning better and we’re insisting more that our leadership who are having conversations with individuals are appropriate. And we’ve got to continue to do that. And I celebrate the fact that when we look at our leadership and I think honestly, Wanda, let’s talk about this in terms of reserved and senior reserved appointments, because you’ve referenced that, I celebrate the fact that we don’t really look at gender, we look at gift, skill, competency. We look at availability. We look at willingness. And then you have to look at things like character and credibility. And you have to look at energy and all of these pieces that come into this conversation to help us make determinations. I’m also celebrating the fact that if you look at our reserved and senior reserved appointments today, it’s the way we refer to them, that we have many leaders who are women serving in significant files, our personnel files, our youth file, our training college file. Do you know that 50 percent of our divisional secretaries in the territory are women leaders today? When we look at our area commanders today, many of them are women leaders. And so I think we have a long ways to go, but I do think that we’ve turned a corner and I think that’s why this work you’re doing is so important because you gotta keep it in front of us.

Wanda Vincent

That's right.

Lee Graves

All of us, we’ve all got to shoulder this together and get this right together. And it’s just more and more important to us. So I think we are making some gains.

Wanda Vincent

We are.

Lee Graves

We have some distance to go.

Wanda Vincent

Sure, that’s right. I guess the important thing is that we keep improving. And some of the opportunities that I’ve had, I really celebrate in terms of having conversations with divisional boards and having conversation with groups of frontline officers. And so continuing to listen and to correct and to improve.

Lee Graves

Yeah.

Wanda Vincent

That’s where we all want to be.

Kristin Ostensen

Absolutely.

Lee Graves

That’s why we hope that everybody’s going to tune into this podcast, because this is another opportunity of this conversation. And it’s really important to us.

Kristin Ostensen

Yes, of course. And thank you so much for all those very practical, very relatable examples. That was really helpful. And you’ve already kind of alluded to the idea of default appointments. But for people who may not know what that means, can you explain what it means and also how it’s relevant to this conversation?

Wanda Vincent

Absolutely. One of the things in The Salvation Army that we celebrate is the dual covenant that many officer couples share. The challenge is a default appointment is something that happens automatically. So if there’s a married couple being proposed for appointments and one spouse, and often it has been the male spouse, is given an appointment, a position that suits that person’s gifts and passions and calling and interest. But the spouse has not been engaged in the same way, or they’re just pegged into a particular role that has historically been given to the female. So, for example, over the years, divisional leaders, many times it has been that the male spouse became the divisional commander and the female spouse was given the role of divisional director of women’s ministries. Now we’ve changed that and that’s not always the case here in the country now, in the territory. However, we want to make sure that even if currently the divisional commander is the male spouse and the default is spiritual life development and personnel secretary, just so that it’s not an appointment that’s just automatic and not particularly considered for their unique personhood, which is one of our gender equity principles. Really we want to make sure that all officers are appointed according to their giftedness and calling, capacity, and willingness to develop into that role.

Kristin Ostensen

Maybe Commissioner you can talk a little bit about how our territory is seeking to kind of remedy that issue of default appointments.

Lee Graves

I think we are remedying it. I think a little bit of that still exists, but frankly we have very few default appointments today. We only have four divisions for one thing, now imagine when I started out we had 22. And so we had far more opportunity. And I think, honestly to acknowledge, that I can’t recall any one of those divisions being led by the female back in those days. But we’ve gone from that number of divisions to 16 to 9. We have four divisions today. And so there is a piece there that we’re at risk a bit. We got to watch this a little bit and make sure that we do get the balance there appropriately. But I still say we need the best leaders that we can possibly have, wherever they are in the organization, wherever they are in the movement. And of course, and then up in the offices where I sit, territorial leadership, now that’s a different matter today where, the General is quite open about this, that the spouse of the territorial commander does not have to be the territorial president of women’s organizations, they can have another role. But it has to be a role of a territorial nature. And so that’s a piece that we’re always examining and always looking at. So I think we have to be very careful about this. And I don’t mind saying that, again, right now in our context, in our territory, we look for all of our officers to be the best leader they can be. If you are a corps officer, recognizing we only have just over 530 officers, the majority of those officers are in corps appointments. And so it’s important, particularly if you are in a husband and wife team, that you understand your division of labour and that locally, in the local context, you make it well known how you want to position yourselves in leadership. I think you’re doing that with your husband today in the appointment where you find yourselves. And I think that’s a local piece that’s so important, coaching support to do that. And the people within that context also have to respect and also have to acknowledge the leadership role that you carry. That’s really important today. I think that we have some significant challenges in front of us in terms of developing people. Not only with the fewer officers, but we have fewer reserved and senior reserved appointments that are available to us. And those would be the more senior level of leadership. It’s a reality of our territory, fewer divisions, and frankly, some of the roles that we have around us today, if we’re not able to develop all of our officers appropriately, it’s going to be more and more challenging for us to fit some officers into some of those roles. And so it’s a piece, it’s a conversation, it’s a concern. And we just have to keep this in front of us every day. I think that this particular conversation is one that we’re so helped by as it comes to the work that you’re doing. And we have a leader of the committee that doesn’t mind stepping up and speaking out.

Wanda Vincent

I try.

Lee Graves

And we celebrate that, and we need that in the territory today and we’re really grateful for that.

Kristin Ostensen

Yeah.

Wanda Vincent

And we have some great officers in this territory, male and female. And I would never want anyone to think that this gender equity work is about any kind of tokenism. We would not want any female leader to be given an appointment just for the sake of the fact that she is female. It is not about that. It is about honouring everyone’s capacity and competency. And it is about saying that we have both female and male leaders who are able to be developed and appointed. And, yeah, so I really, really want to be able to express that point as well.

Lee Graves

I think it’s important.

Wanda Vincent

Yeah. Absolutely.

Kristin Ostensen

And what you’ve both really touched on here is this idea of unique personhood. And this is such an important principle for gender equity and that’s the idea that The Salvation Army will always consider an individual officer’s unique calling, gifts, passions, and so on, and will do appointing and developing regardless of gender or marital status. And I’m wondering if you can talk a little bit more about how we’re working towards doing that, employing that gender equity principle in all that we’re doing with our officers.

Wanda Vincent

One of the things from our gender equity committee is making sure that there is gender equity demonstrated at all levels. Because this isn’t just a leadership issue, it’s not just a personnel department issue. There are ways in which all of us need to demonstrate gender equity wherever we are. And so making sure that we have the right conversations, whether at the divisional level, whether at the corps level, and helping all of us remember what our responsibilities are. So divisional leaders who are having those initial conversations about whether it’s their PEAC conversation or whether it’s an appointment, proposal conversation, or whether it’s about their ongoing development in education. So the conversations that are happening with both the male and female persons are equitable. That’s really important. And then for the officers themselves to also make sure that they are speaking up if there’s any chance that they feel that they’re not being treated equitably, then they need to be able to speak up and share that. And each officer, male and female, are responsible to make sure that they develop themselves so everyone owns their own leadership development journey. And so that’s important as well. So I think it’s something, Kristin, that happens at all levels. It’s all of our responsibility.

Lee Graves

And I think the conversation is rich and important. And we need to be reminding people really at all levels of leadership of the principles of equity. And we need to be training and circling back and over and over again so that we get these conversations right. So they’re appropriate. And we all need to do our part around that. Yeah.

Wanda Vincent

I’m really grateful for lots of front-line opportunities that I’m having with conversation circles we’ve been calling them, with groups of officers, having conversations with CFOT, with pastoral care services, with groups of area commanders, with DMMC boards. So all of these kinds of ... so we’re spreading it broadly so that we make sure that everybody knows that we are working towards enforcing, reinforcing unique personhood and how everyone is treated.

Kristin Ostensen

Thank you so much for that. That was really enlightening. And we’ve talked a little bit about the amazing work that’s being done by the Gender Equity Committee. And I understand, Lt-Colonel Wanda, that the committee recently did some research into gender equity as it pertains to representation on territorial and divisional boards and committees. And I’m wondering if you can tell us a bit about the results of that research.

Wanda Vincent

Sure, thanks for asking that, Kristin. We did some research of about, I think it was 36 committees, territorial and divisional, and we discovered that 70 percent, so 25 out of the 36 committees, have a gender equity membership representation of 40 percent or higher. So not 50/50, but at least 40 percent or higher of male and female. Now that’s important because we’re not just talking about numbers, right? It’s not just about every committee and every board having the exact number of men and women on the committee. However, it is about ensuring that both male and female voices are engaged and that those who are appointed to the committee are people who are contributing to that committee and so that multiple views are represented because multiple views enrich us, male and female. And there’s other pieces of equity, too. Not just gender equity, but there’s other conversations of equity, as well. But when it comes to gender equity, we were happy to see that 70 percent have that. And so that’s good. The 11 committees that are below the 40 percent, those are some of the places where we need to have some conversations about why that is, particularly those that are largely inequitable. Like if you’ve got a committee of 10 or 11 and there’s only one woman, one female voice on there, then we want to say, “OK, let’s dig into why that is and how can we make that better balanced?” I think the other piece, and I’ll let Commissioner Lee respond to this, the other piece of that, those 11 committees that are below kind of where we want to see gender equity, is in some of the highest levels of leadership in the territory. And while we have said that gender equity is about every level of leadership, we do want the highest level of leadership certainly setting the example, Commissioner. So, yeah. So there was those kind of pieces that came out of that research.

Kristin Ostensen

Commissioner can you talk a little bit about what steps are being taken towards working towards gender equity at all levels, especially those higher levels?

Lee Graves

And I think when we talk about our boards and committees, in particular, so just to appreciate that we have an accountability, responsibility to International Headquarters. They share this journey with us, and they’re deeply concerned about gender equity, too. In fact, much of this conversation has been launched out of International Headquarters just a few years ago to give this a fresh look. And so every year we would report to International Headquarters, all the membership of our boards and our councils. Now in addition to that, every member that is being proposed for a board or a council, has to go to the Governing Council of The Salvation Army. Now I happen to chair that just because of my appointment. And I think this is one of the ones that we could look at and say, “We don’t really have a gender balance even on that board.” Our challenge there is that the membership of the Governing Council of The Salvation Army is embedded by law, by act of Parliament. And so we cannot change the membership at will. The membership of that council, the Governing Council, is there by virtue of appointment. And so when we make appointment of a senior leader, very often, that senior leader, by virtue of an act of Parliament, is on the Governing Council. And so there are some restraints that we find, although we do try to pay attention to that. But when we look at memberships, when we look at those being proposed for boards and councils, we do have a matrix that we look at. And we want to make sure that to the extent possible that we have both genders represented well. Not only is that important, but the other piece that’s important is that we do need expertise because we want voices, but we also in many of these boards and councils need a particular expertise. And so we’re trying to wed the two and I think we’re doing OK, but I think we have some distance to go and more conversation to be had.

Kristin Ostensen

So thank you so much both of you for joining us today for this conversation. Such an important one to have, and I really appreciate your illuminating responses to all of these questions.

Wanda Vincent

And thank you, Kristin, for giving us this opportunity. I really appreciate that. And I do want to say thank you to Commissioner Lee as the territorial commander for your support of the gender equity work in this territory. I believe that we will continue to improve.

Lee Graves

Good, thank you. And thank you to you both. It’s been really good to be part of this conversation. So bless you. Thank you.

Kristin Ostensen

Thanks for joining us for another episode of the Salvationist podcast. To learn more about our territory’s gender equity work, visit Salvationist.ca/gender-equity. For more episodes of the podcast, visit Salvationist.ca/podcast.