So, we near a point at which women won't be legally disbarred from becoming Church of England bishops. People are even throwing around notions as to when the first "woman bishop" (which, by the way is an abhorrent phrase – we have long since stopped saying "lady policemen" or "woman policeman") might be consecrated (2013 or 2014 generally).
However, it recently occurred to me: what after that? Can women be said to have full equality in our church if there are a small number of female bishops in a majority male episcopate? There are, according to the report on Bishops' costs, 113 sees in total.
So, for proportionality, there would need to be 57 female bishops (since there are slightly more women in Britain than men). Between 1 Jan 2009 and 31 Dec 11, 23 new bishops will have been consecrated (plus, if I recall correctly, one translated from elsewhere in the Communion), for an average of about 8 per calendar year. If we decided to redress the balance as quickly as possible (hanging certain moral issues which I'm about to explore), the numbers might be about right within 7 years.
But that would involve discriminating against men for 7 years. Which would be hypocritical in extremis. Could the Appointments folks perhaps favour female candidates for a while? Could they somehow arrange that miraculously a women gains about every other vacant see? Then it would take 14 years or more.
Also, there ought to be about 10 non-white bishops (based on 2001 census data) and 5 or 6 LGBT (based on several estimates).
Or ought we always to ensure that our bishops are chosen on merit alone? That would, of course, be preferable, but what if appointments groups "coincidentally" find straight (or closeted) white men to consistently be the best candidates? We ought to be able to trust such representatives, but... it's just difficult.
Besides, I had a squizz around the internet at who the CofE's most senior female priests are. There are 4 cathedral deans (out of 44), 16 archdeacons (out of 121) and (as far as I can tell) about 17 canons residentiary (out of many). That's less than 40 senior (using an admittedly entirely arbitrary definition) female priests (out of many plus 168).
So plenty of work needs to be done much lower down. Probably first.
Addendum: I was asked, so I looked it up: about 1 in 4 CofE priests are female (about 3,000 in 12,000) [source]. I've also added dean & archdeacon totals above.
