Ten years of feminist activism

I haven’t blogged for a long time because I was pregnant and then I had a baby and young babies take up all your time and energy. I keep thinking that I miss blogging as it was, before ‘influencers’ and #content, before feeling like each post had to be perfectly crafted and perfectly nuanced, for the book deal, for the brand, for guarding against the accusations of ‘ranting’ or ‘lacking grace’ or ‘not having researched the subject matter sufficiently’. Blogging as it was, then, when people made the leap from Livejournal et al to setting up public, personal blogs and things weren’t quite so strategic. I guess that’s got something to do with the fact I’ve hesitated once or twice while writing this and asked myself what the point of the post is and what it’s saying. But that’s not the blogging I miss.

It’s ten years since I attended my first feminist march* and first feminist conference. Ten years. I suddenly realised this one night a couple of months ago when I came across this piece by Jess McCabe, published in 2007 and looking at the resurgence of feminist activism around that time that included marches being revived and six new feminist publications launching in the space of 18 months. The same year, The Guardian profiled some of ‘the new feminists’ who were ‘trying to rebrand the f-word’ and feminist writing and journalism was very much on the agenda. It reminded me of my copies of Subtext magazine, still in a cupboard in my bedroom - and how excited I was to find out more about feminist media at FEM 08 in Sheffield, the aforementioned first feminist conference.

FEM 08 was the fourth FEM conference organised by a team including Kat Banyard, which grew from 90 attendees at its first event in 2004 to 500 attendees the year I went. I remember the excitement of being on the train and spotting women I recognised from their newspaper columns, women with banners from organisations I followed online. Catherine Redfern and Kristin Aune were there that day handing out the surveys that would become the research behind Reclaiming the F Word. Three years later I would chat with Kristin over coffee at Watford railway station and discuss the need to bring Christian feminists together, an idea that eventually became the Christian Feminist Network, but in 2008 I don’t think I even really knew any other Christian feminists yet. I was still desperately in search of likeminded churchgoing women who didn’t believe their destiny lay in some heavily gender stereotyped ideal of ‘Biblical womanhood’.

Talks I attended at the conference included 'The Rape Conviction Rate Scandal', 'The Female Face of Poverty' and 'Challenging Destructive Masculinities', although, as my rather breathless Livejournal entry detailing the day explained, the highlight for me was the seminar entitled 'Grassroots Feminist Media' - it was 'so inspiring' to meet the women behind The F Word and Subtext magazine and I was beyond excited about the 'current explosion in feminist media'. Just two years previously I'd been immersed in the world of weekly women's magazines through work, seeing article upon article picking over celebrities' weight, clothes and relationships, 'scary skinny size 0’ celebrities on one page; on the next, shaming other celebrities for having cellulite. The state of my own body image at that time wasn't helped by the media I had consumed and the wounds were raw.

Today's plethora of feminist-flavoured online media outlets and coverage of marches and #MeToo in mainstream magazines means I often forget that the body-shaming, diet-obsessed side of women’s publishing still exists (although some magazines have closed now, as have the 'lad's mags' that were the focus of so much activism back then). Part of that, I guess, is a result of having hung out in the internet feminist bubble for so long. But really, perceptions of feminism in the mid-2000s were very different: we’d all read Female Chauvinist Pigs and its critique of ‘raunch culture’ - some of which now seems to recall almost ancient history in popular culture - Playboy merchandise, trucker hats, Paris Hilton, push up bras and thongs.

In the book, Ariel Levy argues that early noughties ‘raunch culture’ - ‘the emergence of a woman-backed trash culture’ is a ‘rebellion’ against second-wave feminism, the outworking of unresolved conflict between the feminist movement and the sexual revolution, yet also ‘a garbled attempt at continuing the work of the women’s movement’. In her conclusion, she wrote that ‘The proposition that having the most simplistic, plastic stereotypes of female sexuality constantly reiterated throughout our culture somehow proves that we are sexually liberated and personally empowered has been offered to us, and we have accepted it’. Explicitly feminist media, at the time, seemed like a breath of fresh air and for us as young women reacting against the imposition of ‘raunch culture’, crucially important.

It can certainly be argued now that once feminism began to have its cultural 'moment', at some point over the last few years, the movement started to become commercialised and exploited - for content, for developing celebrities' careers, for making money around International Women's Day. And more coverage and more hype sadly doesn’t mean that we’re any closer to getting rid of misogyny. But feminism wasn’t having that ‘moment’ yet and sitting in a student union building talking about subverting mainstream publishing with a more diverse range of articles and body positive messages seemed like revolution when you were 23 years old in 2008 and probably still does for young women, in other corners of the internet and other feminist get-togethers in 2018.

Some of the debates that would later bubble to the surface of the movement and cause pain, splintering groups and communities and friendships were only just developing among everyone involved. Germaine Greer gave the closing speech that day and received a standing ovation - let’s say no more. I also attended a talk on lapdancing clubs by Object. The following year - or maybe the same year - I'm not too sure - I remember the debates following Reclaim the Night London about the way some women had been chanting and booing outside Spearmint Rhino and how the women who worked there might feel about it. I observed the white, middle class profile of most of the attendees at the conference - people like me, it has to be said - who seemed a world apart from my work colleagues back at home. A re-reading of Female Chauvinist Pigs today throws up a host of assertions that would be seen as problematic now and online feminism itself has changed so much, particularly due to fallout caused by what’s often been referred to as call-out culture, where, as noted in this 2011 piece by Flavia Dzodan that always comes to mind when I think about the most toxic elements of call-out culture and ‘trashing’, ‘we all lose’.

In the years following 2008, discussion via Twitter and personal blogs came to define the feminist journey for so many of us, especially those not fortunate enough to live somewhere with feminist networks or groups or for those who met a lot of feminist friends online. I was continually offering to get involved in a magazine or blog that someone wanted to launch and sometimes writing several blog posts every week. Blogs felt like the resistance, the opposition to traditional, sexist media and much was being made of their democratising effect on whose voices had the potential to be heard (doesn't all this seem a bit quaint now?). Some time ago I really wanted to set up a website where women active in the movement at that time could submit pieces about their memories of what some call the beginnings of the Fourth Wave (and what some believe is still the Third Wave). I never got round to it and I worry about so many memories being lost as blogs disappear and websites close and some people take their activism offline and even ‘hashtag feminism’ has evolved.

Ten years since FEM 08, when I think of all the women I’ve met as a result of feminism and the women just starting out in activism at that time, our lives have moved on in so many ways. We’re mostly in our 30s and busy, busy, busy with work, or children, or work and children. Some have moved overseas. We still do activism and write and work with women’s organisations. We don’t always make it to things that happen in London any more because life gets in the way. We share each others’ projects and work and discuss motherhood as a feminist issue on Facebook and even celebrate each other’s books because things have moved onwards and upwards from those first blog posts and discussions on Twitter about sexism in the tabloids.

Things have also become more complicated. We learned that for all the talk of the internet promoting a more diverse range of voices, privileged voices were always favoured and promoted over more marginalised ones. Pushback against this has been vitally important but hard work; change has been slow; listening and addressing assumptions isn’t always easy. Online, people talk of moving on from being a ‘baby feminist’, learning much as they ‘grow up’. Sometimes we forget that everyone starts somewhere. For us, that somewhere was the mid Noughties, when social media was still a thing for ‘internet people’ - and it was life-changing.

*The very first Million Women Rise march. I didn't know anyone else who was going so I volunteered to be a steward. It rained quite a lot and I was posted at the door of the loos in Trafalgar Square during the rally so missed the speeches but the march itself was like nothing I'd ever experienced before.

On being one of the #hiddenhalf

I

"Some professionals just ask are you coping, are you OK? And think that is all they need to ask but this is a very closed question and too easy for a woman just to say yes when she could be crying out for someone to notice her or help her." 

New research from the NCT has found that around half of new mothers' mental health issues don't get picked up by a healthcare professional. Consequently, the organisation has launched a new campaign - Hidden Half - to raise awareness and push for better postnatal care that will identify and treat more cases of postnatal depression (PND) and associated conditions. A key focus of the campaign is making sure the existing checkup that takes place six weeks after giving birth looks at the mental health of mothers - something that doesn't always currently happen. 

I want to talk about my own experiences in the wider context of postnatal mental health issues developing later on, after those first few weeks following the birth. I want to do this because I know from personal experience that it's easy to dismiss symptoms when they're not what you think PND looks like, when you're busy and when very few people take the time to ask. I've never written about this in detail before, but having done a lot of processing of my experiences over the past few years having come to the point of understanding much more about how to practice good self-care, I'm hoping it will be useful, in some way, to at least someone.

Many women surveyed by the NCT said they felt their six-week checkup was rushed, more of a 'box-ticking exercise' than anything else (blood pressure, weight, "Has your bleeding stopped?") and that they didn't feel it was the time to bring up mental health concerns. I remember the appointment, being asked if I'd been 'feeling down' and whether I was coping fine. Of course I was: my physical healing was good, we'd successfully established breastfeeding, I was getting out and about and eating normally and certainly not feeling tearful all the time, or feeling unable to bond with the baby, or anything like that. And besides, don't we always say that, when a complete stranger asks us how we're doing? "Oh yes, fine." "Not too bad."

It took me until I was at least 30 years old to stop pretending to all but a select few people (even myself, once upon a time; some of my teenage diaries are stubbornly upbeat and optimistic when I remember, actually, how miserable I was at the time) that everything was always fine, not too bad, no, I don't need any help, thanks. I had Sebastian when I was 27, so I hadn't got there yet. I always wonder if it's the sort of thing that comes from having been a 'high achiever' when younger, with a fear of not being able to do things and being seen to be incompetent or a failure. 

So yes, I was exhausted, but then it's totally normal for newborn babies to be up half the night feeding, isn't it? It's also totally normal for them to not want to be put down and only feel they can settle when they're on you. They're newborns. I'd read about the 'fourth trimester', frustrating as it sometimes was that other people's babies used to have three hour naps in moses baskets while, unless on the move in the pushchair, on a bus or in a car, mine would hold out, wide awake, until 4pm every day ("newborns can only stay awake for up to two hours at a time" said the books and the websites) when I would gingerly move him, on the breastfeeding pillow, across the bed slightly so I could have about 45 minutes to myself before he woke up again.

That was exactly how I wrote my very first blog post about being a mother - sat on the other side of the bed as he had his one and only little nap of the day, something he did for a good few weeks before I began instigating naptime in the pushchair or on the bus as we travelled somewhere. If you read that very first blog post about being a mother, it's actually pretty positive. And that was really how those early days were. An exhausting, life-changing learning curve, not without struggles, but not that bad. Because when you've got a newborn and you're adjusting to it all, that's how it is and to expect it to be a walk in the park would be ridiculous.

II

"I now always ask “How are you finding being a mum” and am amazed at how that helps them open up."

'Coping' is such a subjective word. When you read lists of symptoms associated with PND they often talk about not sleeping properly; not eating properly; struggling with caring for yourself; struggling with leaving the house or seeing people; having thoughts about harming the baby. I could have looked at a list of such symptoms in those early weeks and told you again and again that no, I was fine, because my life wasn't like that - and that's the truth. The slow creep of postnatal mental health issues came later.

Sleep was probably at the heart of it - mostly his, but by association, mine. As everyone jokingly says when you have a baby, "Well, they do use sleep deprivation as a form of torture". Of course, you get used to it, but then the baby ramps the night wakings up -  in our case with every development phase we experienced, with teething, with colds, with the classic sleep regression periods. And the baby doesn't necessarily sleep in the day either. So you find yourself doing what works, which is let him sleep on you after a feed in the morning. Then after lunch, walk and walk until he falls asleep in the pushchair, which can take up to an hour. Then stay out, walking, because you live in a flat with a flight of stairs directly inside the front door and to go home would involve dismantling the pushchair to take it up the stairs so you can't do that because it would wake the baby.

Eventually, when he was about six months old, I decided enough was enough and attempted putting him down for morning naps in his cot, which resulted in him getting more and more distressed. The health visitor thought that if I went back into the room every minute or so and soothed him, he would get the hang of it and nod off within ten minutes. I reported back that one day, I'd done this for two hours before giving up.

Finally, at seven months old, we did it: morning naps in the cot. The Holy Grail. A whole hour to get things done (or not). Afternoon naps still took place in the pushchair, because there was no way I was staying cooped up in the house all day. And that was the killer. The routine. Every day more or less the same: wake, feed, breakfast, play, feed, sleep, lunch, play, feed, walk and sleep, dinner, feed, bedtime. The occasional baby group or coffee with friends or trip into town, which were always good, but never quite seemed to break up the relentless repetition of everything else. It was winter and it was miserable. I became obsessed with the clock and its ridiculously slow progression, counting out the day in five minute slots and fifteen minute slots and hours until Luke would get home.

When I was pregnant, we used to joke about what on earth we'd do if we managed to produce a really extroverted child. Reader, it happened. And when Sebastian was an older baby, he didn't want to play with his toys or sit in his bouncy chair or sit in his cot and chat to himself. He wanted to interact with people. Everything I did that didn't involve him was an ordeal through which he would usually wail (showering, preparing dinner, catching up with social media). As I was to learn, there's evidence to suggest that mothers are wired to have a particular response to crying infants and if I've had one too many coffees I still find myself getting on edge at the noise of a crying baby in a supermarket. It's really not easy having it as an accompaniment to everything you do.

There was an interesting thread on Mumsnet some time ago, where women shared stories about not really enjoying stay-at-home parenthood. It's such a taboo subject - a lot of people can't comprehend it and a lot more people won't talk about it openly because to do so is so often to be judged. Numerous times, the words 'introvert' and 'perfectionist' popped up on the thread as women sought to describe themselves and explain why those years of having very young children felt so hard. Perhaps that had something to do with it; I could certainly identify.

I've noticed a tendency for more conservative writing on motherhood to lament the way that increasing gender equality and feminist values being more accepted have supposedly led to girls and women not being truly aware of the value and importance of being a stay at home mother. This has, in the eyes of some, led to women feeling unhappy, anxious and resentful about motherhood because they feel that their worth lies in working, in earning money, in being a 'valuable member of society'. It could be argued that capitalism needs just as much critique here and that society does not value caregiving roles, but I always think about how these conservative writers mustn't know many feminist mums because if they did, they'd realise what a straw (wo)man they've created.

For me I could never ascribe that unhappiness and anxiety to simply 'not being at work' or 'not seeing motherhood as valuable'. I saw it as incredibly valuable. At a time when I was finding it all particularly hard because I was used to doing so much that I was no longer doing and I just felt lost and alone, God actually told me as much. There was never any question of it not being valuable; the mental, emotional and physical exhaustion just got so relentless and made it hard to see a way out. It was also so lonely. I wanted to talk to people without having to make small talk about babies and feel like there was a subtle game of one-upmanship about child development being played. I was so immensely grateful if a friend ever 'checked in' to ask how I was or offered to help out in any way. 

Before I had Sebastian I didn't know anyone who had young children - something that's changed as he's grown older and more friends have become parents. I was so thankful to keep in touch with and see the other women from my NCT classes every week when we were on maternity leave. A very few other friends kept in touch and came to see us, but people are busy and they work. It's not their fault. And I know that if you don't say much about how you're really feeling, people won't assume you need support. We knew a lot of people who were particularly involved in church life - and we no longer were. The loneliness and sadness of a shifting relationship with church and church community that year have been very hard to deal with and this continues to be the case, highlighting the value of good support networks. Add a faith shift onto a huge life change and identity shift and you've got a whole load of issues.

III

"...around 30% of women diagnosed with postnatal depression still have depression beyond the first year after childbirth and a significant proportion of women who experience perinatal depression and/or anxiety will develop recurrent long-term mental health problems."

It happened that I went back to work, relieved and happy, after nine months at home. Things sort of got better. I still wouldn't have identified with having any postnatal mental health issues because I'd still never fitted the descriptions of PND that I read. I probably should have twigged, when I spent countless lunch breaks walking and trying to process it all, over and over, a neverending internal monologue about the relentlessness and the loneliness and the feeling of loss of self. I was very much in the midst of attempting to process my shifting relationship with church and had got to the point where I could barely go any more. The last couple of occasions we attended our former church, I had panic attacks after the service.

I started to experience a lot of anxiety about spending time on my own with Sebastian - flashbacks to maternity leave. How were we going to fill the time? Would I cope? When he was two I had a panic attack about the Christmas holiday period because I was going to be on my own with him for four days. In the end it turned out to be better than I had expected. We survived. But it took me a very long time to stop watching the clock, trying not to panic too much, when we were alone together. It seeped into every area of my life and not just the time I spent with Sebastian - time off work, holidays, weekends - anxiety about filling up the day and making the time pass more quickly, panic about free time with no plans, or time to myself, when I couldn't actually relax and my thoughts would race, spiraling downwards.

It's funny, the things you remember about these times in your life. I remember a particular post about motherhood on Facebook. You know, the sort of thing that gets shared thousands of times by all the mums you know because it's so relatable. I think it probably featured a cartoon. It talked about the sleepless nights and the endless repetitive days and wailing babies and feeling rubbish but finished by saying that "and you know you'd do it all again at the drop of a hat". I don't like to use the word 'triggered' lightly, but there was a time where seeing anything like that was deeply upsetting.

I also remember the day I came across information about anxiety and the penny dropped - seeing as it wasn't something I ever would have considered myself to struggle with, even though it immediately became clear I have actually done so since I was a small child. In the same, eye-opening way, coming across information about high-functioning depression. The reality is that postnatal mental health issues don't just look like not sleeping or eating properly and failing to bond with your baby. They can look like a lot of other things as well and they can be evident at six weeks postpartum, six months or three years, which is when I would say that things finally started to turn around for me.

I have a five-year-old now and things are so enormously different. Four was a great age. Five is a brilliant age; it's so much fun. And last year, we made the decision to add to our family, meaning that I'm now expecting another baby later this year. I'm not going to pretend things might not be completely different, but I feel better equipped to deal with it when the time comes. Luke has always been a very involved parent (We shouldn't expect anything else but sadly that's often not the case and I know I'm fortunate) and thanks to the shared parental leave policy that has appeared since Sebastian was born, we hope to share time off together this time around, which should be a huge help.

IV

"60% of mothers who said there was an emotional problem they didn’t feel able to discuss at the six week check cited feeling embarrassed, ashamed or worried that the health professional would think they were not capable of looking after the baby."

This is key. I've seen it in countless online discussions. Women worried that admitting to struggling will mean social services involvement. I don't think I ever felt this way, but a huge barrier to decent mental health that I've worked hard to overcome over the last couple of years has been the fear of what people will think. I've had aspects of my life as a parent that I've always been fairly unapologetic about - the fact that I was happy and relieved to return to work, for example - but others that have caused a lot of stress, like feeling my parenting is judged by some and linked to the fact I work full-time, feeling that people have negative opinions about only children, feeling that it's impossible to relax because you must constantly be seen to be making yourself busy and productive and useful, or feeling that you'll be judged for being open about some of the struggles you've had with church. 

And another important thing to own has been 'feeling my feelings' - sitting with them without responding in a reactive way or indeed falling into a pit of despair or judging myself for having said feelings. I found the 'Sleepy Hedgehog Model' of managing emotions in Emily Nagoski's brilliant book Come As You Are amazingly helpful and remind myself of it on a regular basis. When you've spent years beating yourself up about things you feel, seeing yourself as less than and convincing yourself that your feelings are a problem or invalid, that's not easy - but it's so transformative. 

I do wish in some ways that I'd sought professional help at an earlier point but nothing is ever easy. All you hear is talk of waiting lists and cuts and finding it hard to get help unless things are really bad. And getting help privately isn't an option open to many due to its cost. All that felt discouraging and pointless. And so I've had to do a lot of work on my own, with a small amount of professional help, with friends who have been helpful to talk to, with good resources, learning to be kind to myself and to process events in a helpful way and understanding how my mind works. If the Hidden Half campaign helps more women to access help when they're struggling, it will be amazing and so necessary. And if an increased focus on mental health at the six-week checkup starts to make a difference, I hope that more women will find it easier to access help and to know who to talk to if they find mental health issues develop later on.

There are no prizes for just getting on with it and telling people you're fine. I've finally learned that while I may be tempted to fly under the radar and shut myself off from people when things aren't great, I can reach out to people too. So often, women struggle under the burden of feeling like they must be seen to have it all together, that to admit to anything less will mean being judged and that even to be truly honest with close friends may be taking it too far, opening up too much and becoming that friend who's a needy, irritating burden. We make ourselves smaller and our needs lesser until we become invisible because it's somehow distasteful to have needs and wants and feelings. For the sake of mothers everywhere, this must be resisted. 

Conversations around investment in women in ministry: do they speak to the UK church?

Martin Saunders wrote for Christian Today recently about the experience of attending a conference of the UK's most influential church leaders and their teams, only to realise that "Ninety per cent of the people in the room were male; if you were to take pastors' wives out of the equation, that number would look even worse." He noted that in the UK at least, 'there's no doubt women are being invested in', citing well-known leadership conferences as examples of this - and who could fail to notice the image used to illustrate the piece - Justin Welby surrounded by female clergy?

It was also interesting to note Ruth Gledhill's piece published in the same week, that highlighted the visibility of women in Fresh Expressions:

"...unlike most of the larger, evangelical megachurches where nearly all the leaders are men, dozens of gifted Christian women are emerging as capable leaders of fxC churches.

Having seen a number of photos of the conference Martin attended shared on Twitter that week, I'd also noticed the dearth of women in attendance. It bothered me, as it normally would, but perhaps more so because the churches represented at the conferences were the sort of churches I attend. Women still don't have it easy in the Church of England, but the established church is often held up as an example when it comes to the inclusion of women leaders, when churches like those I've attended since I was 18 are lagging embarrassingly behind, looking, if you attend their conferences (on which I help produce an annual report) and their Sunday services, like so many boys' clubs.

I've felt compelled to move on from two churches partly because of my concerns about the invisibility of women, in one case because I felt a veneer of egalitarianism was dishonestly applied to a set-up where the opportunity to exercise certain gifts was not open to all who might fit the bill. It is genuinely concerning that hundreds of 'influential' church leaders can gather to plan for the future of 'new churches' in the UK, with so few women involved at a high level. Some new churches may be conservative and therefore opposed to women in senior leadership positions, but many aren't, meaning there is no excuse for this happening.

At the same time, the US Christian blogosphere (and indeed, the US national media) was reacting to the twin revelations of Jen Hatmaker's support for equal marriage and Glennon Doyle Melton coming out. Anne Helen Petersen had just written a brilliant piece about the 'new evangelical woman' who loves Pinterest and statement jewellery, drinks wine, goes to a church with a name like 'ONE' or 'Forest Hills' and wouldn't ever vote for Trump - but is still, of course, pretty conservative. "This election has made her feel politically homeless," wrote Petersen.

The bigger story here for some Christian women was not Hatmaker's opinions or Melton's new relationship. It was the way evangelical women's ministry had been thrown into the spotlight - Buzzfeed reporting from its conferences, national newspapers talking about the women who serve as evangelical 'inspiration' through their books, blogs, speaking tours and podcasts.

'Pastor, if you had to ask, "Who's Jen Hatmaker?" it's time to be more directly invested in the spiritual nurture of half your church,' tweeted Jen Wilkin as male church leaders dismissively wondered why on earth Hatmaker had become a talking point because they'd never even heard of her before. It was pointed out by many that churches often invest little in women's ministry and that male church leaders are disinclined to read books written by women or listen to teaching by women.

"If you are an evangelical woman with teaching gifts, there aren't always role models in your local church," wrote Kate Shellnutt for Christianity Today.

The overarching theme here, which subsequently played out in numerous discussions on Twitter and in blog posts, is a reasonably conservative one - the idea that many of the speakers and ministries influencing Christian women are not theologically robust, that problematic teaching abounds and that women would be better served by good quality local church women's ministry, which would therefore empower them to use their leadership and teaching gifts within the church.

There's been much discussion, as a result, of the way gifted evangelical women have gravitated towards parachurch ministries because they find few opportunities in their own churches. Christianity Today named organisations and events like True Woman, Propel, IF Gathering and Belong as examples of these. In the UK there are probably fewer examples and some of the biggest names in women's conferences come from the stable of influential churches like Hillsong and HTB.

A recent discussion between Hannah Anderson and Erin Straza for Christ and Pop Culture's Persuasion Podcast claimed that "the church has outsourced women's discipleship, thereby relinquishing its role in the spiritual formation of half the church."

"Women with gifting are rising up through the ranks, through blogging, through podcasting, through gaining a following online and launching from there into more visible, national ministries," said Anderson, explaining what she's observed in recent years and written about on numerous occasions, including a piece in response to the debate surrounding Jen Hatmaker and stating that this has come in response to the fact many churches don't 'have a way to integrate women into mission and leadership'.

"Women's ministry is much more entrepreneurial than discipleship ministries at large. So what you see is...collecting and advocating and building a following and building this social network," she added, highlighting that this can be both a strength and a weakness of women's ministries.

One strength of such ministries is the fact that they're more accessible to those whose churches have no women's ministry, or who have too many other commitments to attend weekly get-togethers. But Anderson's concern is that 'relatability' and a focus on 'self' - even though she feels this 'has a place' - sometimes takes precedence over in-depth teaching; 'entertainment' and 'head patting' being prioritised over 'sacrifice for something greater than yourself'.

Lore Ferguson Wilbert blogged shortly afterwards on the same theme, imploring "Pastors, keep your doors open", as she wrote:

"It’s easy for men in particular to believe they have opened the doors to women in their church, particularly in complementarian churches, if they have opened the door to one or two who are particularly gifted once or twice."

It may be a particular issue in complementarian churches but it's a problem that goes all the way across the spectrum to the functionally egalitarian churches, where one woman preaching on a couple of occasions might be held up as a positive example; where seven in ten main stage speakers at conferences are men.

"Open your doors to the women longing to serve, pastors, and don’t make them fit into little molds of children’s ministry or administration," concluded Wilbert. "These things are needed, but they are not the whole, or even a fraction, of what women are gifted to do."

It definitely needs to be noted many of the voices contributing to the discussion on women's ministry are complementarian (albeit 'new complementarian', as per the blogosphere discussions of three years ago) and from somewhat conservative churches where in-depth study of scripture is prioritised and parachurch ministries open to more 'liberal' influences are more likely to be viewed as cause for concern.

I've also wondered about the extent to which these concerns about women who have parachurch ministries come from a place of feeling women are fine to lead and exercise influence, but only under the authority of a male senior leader. It could be construed that what we're seeing here is a preference that women still only operate under male authority. Perhaps that's me looking at the issue through my egalitarian lens - I don't believe that women heading up their own organisations, ministries and churches is a problem at all - but we have to wonder whether complementarian views on the issue are influenced by this.

Despite this, it should also give us pause for thought that it's complementarian women that are telling pastors to open doors to women and advocating for greater resources to be poured into discipling and empowering them because they've noticed that the local church is losing gifted women due to lack of investment.

I may end up at a different place to these women in my conclusions about women and the church (although I greatly respect and appreciate their recent conversations on this), but as I think about the photos of church events I see - leadership gatherings from churches like mine, their networks and their 'friends' - I feel that more than ever, we could all do with considering how doors are being opened for women - and how so many doors - in the UK, in 2016 - are currently closed. As it is, women are being left absent, unnoticed and under-resourced as the boys' clubs of ministry and church leadership continue on their way, seemingly oblivious. As it is, I want to think about how I - and other women in our church circles - can help effect change.

Further reading

What I Want Pastors to Know About Women's Ministry - Sharon Hodde Miller

Navelgazing

I was chatting to a friend on Twitter the other day about my post on the script we use when we do vulnerability online and we ended up talking about writing in general. I mentioned that these days, I worry that anything I publish will just be awful navelgazing. I joked then that actually, when I look at my navel it reminds me that there’s a story there. Even gazing at my own navel is a storytelling opportunity. See, I am a storyteller after all.

When I look at my navel, there’s a funny little line inside it and only I can really tell that it’s a little misshapen compared to how it used to be. It’s the only visible evidence of a laparoscopy I had done at the beginning of 2013; one of the three incisions the doctors made right before they removed one of my ovaries, the associated Fallopian tube and something else - something hidden.

I

It’s about 1994 or 1995, I think, one morning at Sunday School and we are talking about ‘gifts’. We are asked to draw something depicting what we are good at. I set to work with my sheet on paper, drawing something or another to show that I am ‘good at writing’. Imagine my horror, when we have to explain to the rest of the group, what we’ve drawn and the girl sitting next to me - my age, the sort of girl who everyone thinks is good and kind and sweet - stands up and presents her piece of paper that explains that she is ‘good at helping’. Why didn’t I think of that? ‘Helping’ is nice. Helping is thoughtful. Maybe my admission that I’m good at writing is big-headed and not particularly holy. And so I feel a little bit envious and also, as if I’ve done something wrong, even though no-one gives me that impression.

II

It’s 2011, I’m 20 weeks pregnant and I’m lying down with my midriff exposed watching my baby on a screen across the room; arms, legs, organs, brain all looking healthy. The sonographer moves the probe to the right as he finishes up. He looks more closely. “Do you have endometriosis?” he asks. I don't.“Have you ever noticed a lump in your abdomen?” I haven’t.

“I can see a mass to the right of your womb,” he says. He leaves the room and comes back with someone else who has another look. It looks like some sort of cyst, they say, but a solid one, a big one. It’s the size of my fist - my actual fist. It might be growing. It might cause problems for the baby in the third trimester. I might have to have an operation to remove it and there’s a chance that this would bring on premature labour.

Over the course of the next few weeks, it's determined that this uninvited guest is a dermoid cyst, that it isn’t growing, that it’s not malignant and that it’s so snugly tucked away inside me that nothing needs to be done about it until after I’ve given birth. I’m told that its size coupled with the fact it hasn’t grown in the time we’ve known about it means it may well have been camping out on my right ovary since before I was born, carefully hidden yet growing ever more significant.

III

It’s 2015 and I’m going to a Christian festival. I’m going with no expectations. I’m over the hype, the anticipation that it’s going to be the week that God does something amazing because we’re all a bit jaded with expecting that much of festivals, relying on the ‘high’ they provide and besides, I’m working there so any sort of experience will be a bonus. On my first afternoon off I head to a seminar and at the end, I stay for the ministry because the seminar is about juggling all life’s demands as a woman and what I really want to know, what I’ve really been praying about, is whether I should give up my responsibilities at church and maybe even step back from church for a while because all it does it make me anxious and cross.

A woman comes to pray for me and as she finishes, she tells me about a word she has for me. Later that day I excitedly message a friend from church because just a couple of weeks earlier, she’d told me the very same thing that this woman has just said. It’s a picture so specific and detailed that there’s no way anyone can say it’s just a coincidence - but I have no idea what it means. 

…

Several weeks later I was talking to another friend about a mission trip she was going on. She was talking about what she feels is her calling in life and all of a sudden, the words of two different women, one of whom didn’t even know me, made sense.

My tale of that day at Sunday School when I didn’t feel I’d said the right thing was something I’d forgotten about for years until fairly recently, when it suddenly came back to me as I was trying to plan a devotional about God-given gifts. It was probably a jolt I needed, because it helped me to start making sense of something I’ve always struggled with - accepting and embracing what I can do rather than feeling shame about the things I’m not so good at.

As I’ve often shared in the past, much of my time in the church has been characterised by the sneaking suspicion that I don’t really fit in anywhere, with my distinct lack of characteristics I’ve always felt you’re supposed to have as a Christian and particularly a Christian woman. I read this piece the other day and it made me laugh because I recognised myself in it - particularly over the last couple of years, as I’ve struggled more and more with writing for an audience, impostor syndrome a constant presence. 

Yes, I could do writing and speaking and presenting and creativity and ideas, but I didn’t know what all that was for outside of work. It's been like a mantra that I have work skills, not church skills. I’ve also come to realise that even I still have a bit of discomfort with being open about what I’m good at because I’m a woman. So many people unfortunately see women who can talk and women who can write as having an agenda, as pushy, putting themselves out there for the sake of it. 

It’s a problem in society as a whole but never more evident than in the church, where it often feels as if speaking, writing and having opinions must come with a caveat that you don’t hate men of course, obviously, you don’t have an agenda, you’re not one of those angry or controlling women. The temptation is to minimise yourself, to become small enough to fit into the box of others’ expectations. It’s embarrassing admitting that you’ve fallen prey to that, really, but it’s no wonder.

The words from the two women - my friend and the stranger - both mentioned a gift from God in a box that doesn’t look very exciting or attractive, to the extent that I disregard it and keep on looking for something that I perceive to be ‘better’. All the while, it’s the gift in the less attractive box that’s important - a gift hidden in plain sight, a gift that’s always been there.

Now here’s where my analogy goes slightly awry, because in 2013, that thing that had been hidden away inside me since goodness knows when (growing teeth, just so you know - because dermoid cysts are a fascinating yet slightly terrifying example of the things our bodies can do) was whipped out and disposed of. I never knew it was there before and I can’t tell that it’s gone now. But this is a story about the significance of things unseen, the importance of the things we don’t notice and pay no attention to even though they’re definitely there and have been for a very long time. It's a story about never listening to the people close to us when they affirm us, mentally stamping every positive statement with 'Not good enough, though' until God probably, finally, gets so sick of it that He gives us a smack round the head.

I have a voice that I’ve never been entirely comfortable with or accepting of. And I’m still not entirely sure what it means to embrace it and what that means outside of work these days with blogging having changed the way it has and a busy life and having recently started attending a different church where I’m only just starting to consider how I might be involved. But what I do know is that it no longer means silencing myself and dismissing my voice because somewhere, there must be a pretty box filled with the gifts I think I’m supposed to have, rather than the ones I’ve always had.

Three conclusions from 2015, a year of shifting faith

Much to think about #outofsortsbook

A photo posted by Hannah Elizabeth Rose Mudge (@boudledidge) on Dec 22, 2015 at 2:34pm PST

I'm not particularly proud of quite a few of the blog posts I've written over the years; some of them show me at my absolute worst: enjoying drama, taking mocking things and trying to be clever with it a bit too far, being full-on cynical all day every day. One post I am particularly proud of, however, is the one I wrote about my journey with motherhood, faith and church in May last year. It meant a lot to me to finally be able to write about something that had been plaguing me for so long - and as I was to discover, it meant a lot to other people too - people who could identify with what I was saying. People who, in a couple of cases, had never felt about to vocalise what they were feeling before.

After the post, 2015 continued in much the same way. Pieces about millennials and the church were still being written on probably a weekly basis. The Evangelical Alliance even surveyed UK millennials for a fascinating report, Building tomorrow's church today, which is great, because we hear an awful lot about Christian and post-Christian millennials in the USA, but there are some enormous differences that mean we can't assume too many similarities.

After another few months of reading all the open letters, all the hot takes on why people who have issues with church are just consumer Christians and selfish babies, having all the thoughts, being able to reel off all the buzzwords and stock phrases about my generation and church, and developing a bit of an obsession with pieces about Hillsong churches (and how they square with current popular narrative that young people are leaving flashy megachurches and discovering tradition and liturgy), 2015 ended up being all about coming to some realisations and making some decisions.

1. God is not some disappointed performance manager

I've struggled to work out where it came from, but pretty much ever since I've been a Christian, I've tended to see myself as a bit of a disappointment. I feel as if it's most likely that it started from a place of low self-esteem and perfectionism, and that it was made worse by pressured Christian contexts, anxiety, together with a combination of not having fully taken on board key bits of scripture and, let's be real here, snobbishness about a lot of what I've always seen as saccharine, self-helpy, feelgood rubbish that seems to quite often be delivered as part of cringey women's events that I wouldn't normally touch with a bargepole.

I'm talking about stuff like God's love, acceptance and grace. And also the fact that actually, I'm not a terrible person because I didn't want to get 'on board' at the vision meeting and my anxiety went off the scale every time there was a call for people to serve on more teams and all I could feel was dread when I got an email about 'events you may be planning in your area'.

I have this story that I tell for laughs; it's about the time I listened to a sermon about 'giving yourself a spiritual healthcheck' and we were all encouraged to think about being in a car, and whether we would say that God was in the driver's seat or the passenger seat, or sitting in the back (or tied up and stuffed in the boot, I thought, because that's genuinely how I felt about my relationship with God and church at that time, a couple of years ago). And of course behind many of the stories that we tell for laughs, there's a lot of pain. For me, it was a pain that grew until I couldn't cope with the incessant Sunday morning calls-to-action to join up, get better, commit to improving x and y - so I had to tune them out. I had a coping strategy for the anxiety caused by feeling like an awful person at church. It may not have been a very sophisticated coping strategy (effectively, it involved just not listening), but that's what I was doing.

I was talking to someone about it last autumn and she told me I didn't need to feel guilty. It was hard for her to see how I could beat myself up - a full-time-working, mothering, writing, household-running person. I told her that around the time of the spiritual health check incident, I'd heard a church leader tell people like me - 30-somethings balancing careers and young children - not to get 'complacent' about the Kingdom and about getting involved in church stuff. As an exhausted, recently-returned-to-work, toddler-parenting Christian, I was pretty ready to let him have it over that comment (but I didn't, because I was too cross). However well these comments are meant, they can cause deep hurt. And it still burns, but I know God knows. He sees. And I don't believe He's shaking His head and tutting at what my life looks like now.

2. He also has a sense of humour 

The perfectionist in me doesn't like those words like 'consumer Christian' and 'complacent'. So in 2015, having felt I'd retrieved some of the headspace I'd lost in the baby and toddler years, I set about making sure no-one could accuse me of being either, thank you very much. This involved improving my prayer life (and because I like peace and quiet and nobody being up in my space, that means walks on my lunch break), getting back into reading again, and visiting some different churches. Excitingly, I have even managed to listen to a few sermons online (only a few, mind you - there are only 24 hours in a day). Related to this, because it's not easy to claw back time from my day to do it, I also spent a good few days on Twitter, on and off, having a ranty discussion about full time pastors and academics being snobby about people who don't have the time or enegry to constantly read and learn and expand their minds. I attended my first ever New Wine summer event, my first ever Youthwork Summit, and as always the Gathering of Women Leaders. And I've been talking to people at church about what's been going on.

Most of this has been great, and it's led to some serious moments of realisation that have cleared up stuff I've been agonising over for years. Giftings and callings, for one. I know I've written before about my ever-present anxiety that I have nothing to offer the church. Ask me what I'm good at, as a woman in a seminar at New Wine did, during one of those often-awkward 'discuss with the person next to you' moments, and I've always been able to tell you, but never have I thought these things have anything to do with my place in the church.

Thanks to two identical words at two different times from two different people, one of whom I had never met before and have never seen since, and several weeks of trying to figure out what on earth they meant, now I know that they do. And when I announced this to my husband, he reminded me that he's only been telling me the same thing for the past few years. 2015 has taught me that I am truly terrible at believing anything anyone says about me unless I've had a personal revelation of it - which brings me on to my decade-long suspicion of saccharine, cringeworthy platitudes aimed at Christian women to make them feel good about themselves.

I remain a truly humorless feminist killjoy on this point: if you're telling women they're precious princesses to try to combat structural oppression without critiquing patriarchy...just don't. But last year, I read an old post that Glen Scrivener shared, and by the end I was basically cheering at my desk. Then I had a conversation with Glen that started with me grumbling about my long-held dislike of 'princess' terminology and ended with him saying 'The Prince totally loves us. But He doesn't leave us in the chamber. He calls us to the throne.' By this point, I was basically channeling a little bit of fandom that really shows my age ( "Damn straight, you tell ’em Albus, testify!", snap snap snap etc.). It's ridiculous how you can be blinkered to something for so long. Especially when God further rubs it in via a prayer-ministry based moment several months later.

3. The church could take some tips from the charity sector

You're probably really concerned about what I'm going to suggest at this point, given the picture of charities that the media has been working hard to paint in recent months. Over the last three years, my day job, coupled with my status as a millennial who's suspicious of being sold things and marketed to and just wants, like, authenticity, has left me beyond disillusioned with megachurch culture, the marketing and strategising and branding and careful curation of a presence and, as I would refer to them when at work, the donor journeys. I'm talking about the 'journeys' that, in the church, can put members on a sort of treadmill of predictable topics and lead-ups and build-ups to courses and initiatives with the idea that they will take certain steps.

At this point, feel free to call me hypocritical, because in my working life, this is essentially what I do, day in day out. It's also probably the reason I would quite like a break from it on a Sunday. I'm not alone - in recent months I've read umpteen pieces expressing the same sentiments (they are, after all, a key point in this debate on millennials). Pictured at the top of this post is how Sarah Bessey put it very neatly in the excellent Out of Sorts. 

Now, I'm not stupid. I know that a lot of this is key to the running of churches and that it's not necessarily a bad thing. Recently it occurred to me, however, that one of the current major concerns fof the third sector needs to be a key consideration for churches too. You can't have the strategy and the marketing and the journeys without focusing just as much on retention, in a way that is authentic and is meaningful and genuinely communicates that you care, that you're appreciative. Openness and honesty are important, because they build trust.

If you can't give a member of your church a straight answer on what the church believes about a particular issue when the member can see from your practice that it's obvious you have a definite opinion, that's not honesty. If being part of the body of Christ is very much about community, what happens when people feel like little more than another resource to be exploited? If you talk the talk on diversity but who gets to 'play' on a Sunday shows you don't walk the walk, how are those whose faces (or bodies) don't fit going to feel?

When care, community, openness, trust, and the idea that members can play a meaningful part in something important are deprioritised, there will be a problem with retention. Call me a lazy consumer if you like but my work and my eperience tells me it can't all go one way for too long without people becoming disillusioned. And this isn't confined to certain types of churches  or denominations (although I do believe size is a major factor). It shouldn't be ignored. I know that churches do think about turnover, but despite sometimes being tackled with the best intentions, it's sometimes misguided.

The end of 2015 saw us make some exciting decisions, and the first months of 2016 will see us exploring our options as a result. Things haven't been easy, but change is coming.

Theological conferences and inclusivity: a conversation

Earlier this week I received a comment on a post written four years ago - part of a conversation that sparked a huge debate and, I believe, was a catalyst for a strengthening of women's voices in the Christian blogosphere. At the time I wrote Female Christian bloggers: a rare breed? it was frequently assumed that any Christian blogger worth reading was a man. Men wrote about serious and meaty topics; women's blogs didn't really count as Christian blogs when the rankings of 'top bloggers' got published because they tended to write more about daily life and stay away from heated theological debates.

In 2011 I argued that the voices of Christian women were not absent online, but marginalised. Regarded as less serious than their male counterparts, often lacking in confidence about their knowledge and gifts, and - thanks to online abuse towards women and the unpleasant atmosphere below the line - less willing to engage in debate, Christian women were certainly writing, but were overlooked.

Looking back, I'm proud that the conversations sparked by my post and by Lesley's contributed to many more women beginning to make their voices heard and particularly to speak out against misogyny in the church. Just this week I saw Rachel Held Evans referred to as the 'leader' of progressive Christians online. While I don't really know what I think of that statement, it's evident that four years on from my observation that just 19 out of 122 blogs on a particular Christian blog aggregator were written by women, things have changed - and that's a good thing.

Make no mistake, however - the digital world may be somewhat more inclusive than in 2011, but the church has a long way to go. This week, Christian leaders and teachers have gathered in Bedford for the THINK conference, an opportunity to work through 1 Corinthians in depth in the company of like-minded individuals. I'd seen the conference advertised earlier in the year and while it looked interesting, I had assumed that as someone not in formal church leadership, it was not 'for me'. It was a shame, I thought, because there are so very few conferences that do that sort of work.

On seeing a picture of the first day of the conference posted on Twitter, and what appeared to be a room full of white male delegates, I asked whether anyone I knew was attending, and if so, were any women present? Over the last two years I've been involved in an initiative raising awareness of the way Christian conferences exclude women both as speakers and as delegates. Project 3:28 has led to some helpful and productive conversations with event organisers who are open to understanding how conferences exclude women and who want to set a positive example. I did not believe that the THINK conference would explicitly be off limits to women, but as a conference out of the NewFrontiers stable, I was interested to see if women were involved.

Another friend of mine confirmed that she had attended THINK in 2014 and that she was the only woman there.

@mattcurrey @boudledidge @simplepastor I'd been nervous of going b/c I thought I wld prob be a minority and wasn't sure how I'd be received

— Hannah Swithinbank (@hannahswiv) July 7, 2015

@mattcurrey @boudledidge @simplepastor And it felt like no one there could quite understand why a woman might not choose to go to that space

— Hannah Swithinbank (@hannahswiv) July 7, 2015

@mattcurrey @boudledidge @simplepastor ... Though everyone individually was very welcoming and nice to me.

— Hannah Swithinbank (@hannahswiv) July 7, 2015

To many, this could seem strange. If a person is treated in a kind and friendly way when attending an event even as an outsider, what's the problem? The problem is the insecurity that comes with being a woman in an all-male space, coupled with (generally) differing ways of engagement, which is often down to socialisation. Women tend to learn from a young age that they're expected to be quiet and take a back seat while men dominate in group settings. It's the reason why women only space is so valuable, and it's one of the key things men can work on in terms of being more inclusive.

We've had a number of years now to observe, in the digital realm, the combative way that men often engage with theology and their opinions about the church. In an atmosphere that is frequently not a safe space for women thanks to theological and/or cultural beliefs that mark us out as somehow inferior, and considering the struggles with impostor syndrome and lack of confidence that women often face, it's no wonder that somewhere like the THINK conference could make a woman feel uncomfortable. Particularly - as Hannah pointed out - when the conference is hosted by a group of churches known for making complementarianism a distinctive.

The challenge for the organisers of events such as THINK is to make them inclusive. I was intrigued to learn that as a small group leader, as someone who works for a Christian organisation, the conference would not have been off limits to me. Hannah and I agreed that it would be encouraging to go to such an event knowing that other women would be there - knowing, as a result, that the organisers saw it as more than a boys' get-together, a meeting of an inner circle. As part of Project 3:28 I have discussed the practical ways organisers can make conferences accessible to women - inviting women who they feel would benefit from an event, being understanding about childcare arrangements and facilities, and making clear that when 'leaders' are mentioned that this means women too.

David Capener, who has only recently become an acquaintance of mine on Twitter, was quite right to point out that the photo we'd seen of the event gave the impression everyone in attendance was white. It's all too easy for church leadership to remain homogeneous as people of influence  - unintentionally or otherwise - seek out and raise up others who are just like them. Together with Phil Whittall we agreed that diversity must be aimed for, but David suggested that he believed things are unlikely to change within the next decade.

David, Phil and I have agreed to continue a blog conversation about this, and I'm excited and thankful that they've been open to engagement on how conferences like THINK can be more accessible and open to those who may genuinely benefit, even though they don't fit the 'mold' of a traditional elder.

The nagging wife: symptom or cause?

The 'nagging wife' is a centuries-old stereotype that refuses to die. She's the subject of eye-rolling banter between men, the warning from the pulpit and the marriage guidance book, the defence of countless men who have committed murder. In recent weeks, she has resurfaced as a truly 21st century reminder to women that there's something else they're probably not doing well enough at - in the form of a piece entitled 'I wasn't treating my husband fairly, and it wasn't fair'.

The post, which appears to have gone viral in the grand tradition of 'pseudo-meaningful revelations about my relationship that easily translate into clickbait' (247,000 shares on Facebook), details a wife's realisation that her controlling and obsessive attitude to household matters was belittling her husband and buying into another hard-to-stamp-out stereotype - that of the 'useless' husband who can't be trusted to do a thing around the house.

Thousands upon thousands of women have apparently recognised themselves in this tale and I don't think she's entirely wrong. I've heard her tale in conversations in the office or on nights out with friends. 'Wife always knows best' - 'happy wife, happy life' - I've heard people say it and I've most definitely seen them post it on Facebook (there is a theme here. Facebook has a lot to answer for). And I don't buy into it because, really, what does it say when the only words that come out of your mouth regarding your partner, your husband, the father of your children - are about how 'useless' he is and how you won't 'let' him do things?

This works both ways. It's clear that men and women are called to respect and honour each other and sickly relationship-themed clickbait is, for all its faults, reasonably good at pointing this out. However what's often noticeable is the way this point is made differently, depending on whether the post in question is primarily about, or written by, a man or a woman. A key theme in relationship-focused clickbait from men (particularly of the loosely Christian variety): 'You'll be bawling your eyes out when you read about the amazing thing this guy did for his wife'. Conversely, a key theme in relationship-focused clickbait from women: 'The one thing I realised I needed to do more of/less of as a wife and mother'. As ever, identifying our inadequacies and how we must 'do better' defines us as women.

In writing about her tendency to take control and insist that things are done 'her way' - the purchasing of meat, the sorting of laundry - one woman has identified a key way that power struggles between couples often play out. She mentions that she doesn't believe men act in the same way towards women, referencing the fact her husband is 'just not as concerned with some of the minutiae as I am'. But what she doesn't identify is what is so often the reason for this, and the reason for the way women frequently feel compelled to assert power.

I don't know many women who are comfortable with simply doing nothing. Relaxing, chilling out, whatever you prefer to call it. I'm one of them. I've had countless conversations with friends where we've discussed our discomfort with sitting still. There are, quite simply, always things that must be done, whether that means housework or running errands or getting through our 'to read' list or writing another blog post. Not for nothing do we talk about the 'second shift' or the 'double burden' - the fact that women's increased entry into the workplace has not resulted, in the majority of cases, in an egalitarian set-up when it comes to housework, childcare, and the general organisation of family life. 

Even women who do enjoy a more equal partnership struggle to allow themselves downtime, knowing at the same time that their partners have no such qualms about relaxing - and for many it's learned from childhood in the way they've seen the household roles their parents have played.

The curse of modern womanhood, as we all know too well, is that whatever you do and however you do it, feelings of guilt and inadequacy will snap at your heels like an angry terrier. The majority of society, from politicians to journalists, to people on parenting forums and your own relatives have a wealth of opinions on what constitutes acceptable womanhood and unfortunately, most of us socialised to care a whole lot about what others think about us and out lifestyle choices.

This, of course, happens in different ways. I enjoy a pretty egalitarian marriage and couldn't care less if I haven't dusted my mantelpieces in living memory, but I've certainly considered myself a bit of a let-down for sitting on the sofa watching television when emails have languished in my inbox and projects haven't moved forward as quickly as I would have liked (and those are personal emails and personal projects, not even work-related ones).

Even today, especially today, the running of the home and of family life inevitably falls on the shoulders of women. Even if it doesn't, in theory - for those in equal partnerships for example - we still consider it our responsibility, berating ourselves internally when they let something slip. The minutiae of daily life all too easily becomes a source of anxiety - I know I've had to remind myself that I am, in fact, allowed to relax and that this is not the same thing as laziness. And for many women, the efficiency and performance of the minutiae of daily life is one of the few areas in which they can exert power and control.

Guarding against a hunger for power and control is something all humans must do. A toxic force within relationships and families, it often manifests in differing ways because of the ways men and women are brought up to behave and to gain power, and the ways society considers it acceptable for them to do so. Discouraged from speaking our minds and pursuing confrontation or appearing to 'dominate' a relationship, women are encouraged instead to resort to manipulation and only ever to demonstrate indirectly that they might 'know best', or indeed have feelings about anything at all. It's even a tactic that's encouraged by numerous Christian books on marriage: upholding traditional gender roles means subtly manipulating and influencing your husband rather than asking him or telling him. That would, of course, be 'nagging', or assuming a dominant role.

'Nagging', and the range of emotions and issues it encompasses - the wrong meat purchased, the blue sock accidentally included in the white wash, the fact that somehow, people do things differently to you and that's just not right - must therefore be looked at as part of the wider picture of how women are permitted to exercise control over their own lives and the lives of others. 

The key sphere in which women are permitted by society to exercise authority is the home. In a world of judgement, anxiety and the feeling that whatever you do will somehow be not good enough and that there are countless factors in your life that you can't control, household tasks are one of things that you can. Whereas men are allowed to assert authority in the public sphere and as the 'head of the household', women remain largely responsible for all that lies beneath, and even today, they know that their worth as women is often judged by it.

Men have - usually - not been brought up to notice the minutiae of the home and family life. They haven't had to, because, historically, it's always been women's work. It's something that's been done for them and they've often never really had to think about it - yet many (not all) expect it to somehow get done anyway. Even in relationships where both partners truly don't care about crumbs on the floor and the correct brand of mayonnaise being purchased, women feel compelled to set standards lest they be judged by society, their friends, their mother-in-law - and found wanting in a way that men never will. 

In a world where this burden still inevitably falls to women, in a world where humans want control and power, the woman whose anxiety and anger over things not being done 'her way' can be seen as a symptom, not just a cause, of gender relations that need restoration. Perhaps a more balanced and egalitarian approach to home life - where tasks and responsibilities are not gendered - might alleviate the need to control and 'take charge' over simple household tasks.

'You can't be what you can't see' - or why gender parity at conferences matters

In 2011, Jennifer Siebel Newsom's documentary Miss Representation captured the imagination of those who are passionate about seeing girls and women reach their full potential. Despite the advances made in recent decades, women are still subject to messages from society that tell them their worth lies in how they look, assigning them a narrow set of priorities and limiting their horizons. That year, the motto "You can't be what you can't see" was everywhere. As I wrote at the time:

"Even if you haven't watched the trailer yet, with its footage of bikini-clad women in music videos interspersed with derogatory newspaper headlines about women politicians, you can probably reel off a list of the ways the media and popular culture makes it abundantly clear what us women are good for. We're the eye candy, the gender whose worth is bound up in how sexy we are. We're the bitches and the backstabbers and the lovers of catfights. The yummy mummies and the slummy mummies. The bosses from hell and the boardroom ballbusters. When we go into politics, the newspapers run stories on our dress sense and cleavage rather than our achievements. Men turn up at our public appearances holding banners saying 'Iron my shirt'. 

"How is this making the women of the future feel and what's it doing to their ambitions Miss Representation reveals all. It reveals how such toxic imagery is making girls and women feel devalued and ignored - as one teenager says, it's as if no-one cares about their brains, only their looks. It reveals how girls' dreams and ambitions change over time, as they find themselves trapped in stereotypes of what a woman should be and treated accordingly by boys, trapped by the perception that 'feminine' or 'like a girl' means 'inferior'." 

In recent months I've had cause to look back at my diaries from years gone by, and what has struck me more than anything else is the sense of alienation that I felt from the church as a young woman who didn't feel like she conformed to the popular stereotype of 'Biblical womanhood'. When I finally found women 'like me', particularly women who I could see doing the things that I felt I was gifted to do, I knew that they were my people. They were mentors and cheerleaders and role models for women like me, and they gave me hope that contrary to the impression I'd been given, there was a place for me in the church.

At the end of 2013, I was involved in the initial conversations that grew into what is now known as Project 3:28. These conversations were inspired by the discussions about that year's The Nines conference, which began with a tweet from Rachel Held Evans: "More than 100 speakers and four of them are women. This is not what the church looks like." We wanted to take a look at the UK Christian conference scene and see if we'd fared any better than The Nines. In our first year of analysing conference line-ups, we found that although it's claimed 66% of churchgoers in the UK are women, they make up just 34% of speakers at conferences.

Last week, we released the statistics from 2014's conferences, and it was encouraging to note that several organisations had been encouraged to think about gender parity in their line-ups that year. The report, once again, prompted plenty of conversations. There has been news coverage, and there have been blog posts. Some people think that the report is a terrible waste of money (hint: it didn't really cost anything at all), and others have argued that it's obvious that women are underrepresented - why should we need a report to tell us that? I would argue that a report was needed because it has spurred people into action. It has recognised the efforts of organisations trying to be inclusive, and in giving people the figures, it underlines the extent of the issue. The vaguely negative accusations levelled at those of us involved in the project have been interesting and frustrating, not least because they're no different from the stock responses that those passionate about gender and the church have to deal with every time they stick their heads over the parapet.

Nobody's saying that we should prioritise a 50:50 ratio of speakers over gifting, knowledge, and experience. 

What we're simply saying is that the gifting, knowledge and experience of the body of Christ is often not reflected in who gets to speak, who gets to lead, and who gets to be considered an authority.

Yes, women sometimes have different styles of leadership to men. And they often make different life choices due to lack of confidence. 

But as Miss Representation told us, you can't be what you can't see. I speak from personal experience when I say that many of us who are underrepresented in leadership benefit from having people like us to model it for us before we can believe it's something we can do, something that would be possible. That doesn't just go for women and the church - we're talking about all minorities here, in all areas of life. If women aren't stepping up to speak at conferences right now, that's not to say things can't change if they start to see a better way modelled.

Women are mothers. And?

Some of the women who have been the greatest influence on me in recent years are mothers. And they're doing what they're doing despite being mothers. It's my firm belief that mothers who are called to lead can do so with the right support, whether that's more equally shared parenting or conferences and organisations being considerate of their needs and helping out with childcare, or enabling them to bring along another adult to watch the children while the preach happens. It is simply not true that the secular feminist movement, the Christian feminist and egalitarian movements and conferences with a commitment to gender parity have little interest in promoting a more equal approach to parenting. It's one of the keys to women realising their full potential, And we must continue to advocate for it.

If women feel that their children take priority over ministry and career, so be it. That's their prerogative. But it's not the whole story. To say this is the case for the majority of women is incorrect - and it casts a disapproving eye on women who feel otherwise: women like me, and so many other women I know, who don't feel that a few hours of evening preparation and a day spent at an event means our children are worth less than profile and accolades.

Lack of gender equality isn't the problem. Conferences and high profile speakers are the problem, apparently. 

All that scoffing at Christian events and 'well known speakers' and snide little 'ughs' at the very idea of desiring to hold a leadership position or stand on a platform or teach people looks a little bit suspect when it's coming from people who are the leaders and the speakers and the high profile names, by which I mean white men - sorry, but that's exactly who I mean. It's all right for you, isn't it? You can scoff, and talk about how Christian culture needs to change, but come conference season everyone on the line-ups will look a bit like you, sound a bit like you - and they'll probably include some of your friends as well.

Project 3:28 didn't spring up when a bunch of people in thrall to the idea of helping women to become 'big names' and 'Christian celebrities' decided to try to make it happen. We'd all agree that a culture of Christian celebrity and waiting for conference season for a yearly spiritual high at the expense of the local church, of building relationships and grassroots organisation is inadvisable and can be toxic. But at the same time, we know that events and conferences are important to many. People go to them in order to be fed, to be inspired, and to grow in their relationship with God. We all need a balance - and while we know that Christian culture can be problematic, there's no reason we should seek to model gender justice in this very visible sphere.

How is making women more like men the answer to inequality?

Let's get one thing straight: appealing to the 'why should we squeeze women into a male mould?' school of thought doesn't wash. If you think the 'masculine flavour' of church leadership and speaking is a problem, why seek to uphold the status quo and fob us off by pretending we're better off out of it? Let's challenge inequality together, not by keeping men and women in separate spheres. Change the 'flavour'. if women lead and speak in different ways, let them do it.

What about [insert issue here]? Isn't that far more important? 

Maybe it is. But gender justice is my thing and I'm going to stick to it, for all the women who have ever felt they can't be the person they want to be because they can't see anyone like them paving the way.