Call for Increased Strategic Effort to Ensure Gender Equity in LWF Leadership

Pre-Assembly Participants Seek Stronger Women’s Presentation at Governance

GENEVA, 29 October 2009 (LWI) - Women attending the first preparatory conference for the July 2010 Eleventh Assembly of the Lutheran World Federation (LWF) have called for more strategic effort to ensure gender equity in the organization's leadership and sensitivity to issues that affect women.

LWF member church representatives at the 27-31 October Women's Pre-Assembly (WPA) commended the LWF for providing different forums where women and men could share experiences and learn from the diverse contexts of the Lutheran communion. They noted, however, that this was not sufficient.

LWF Executive Committee member Rev. Dr Barbara Rossing expressed appreciation for important insights that she had gained from her participation in LWF governing body meetings and in international and regional consultations on theological issues and diakonia among other areas of LWF's work. "My experience in the LWF has changed my own work and ministry," said Rossing, who is chairperson of the Program Committee for Theology and Studies. The ordained pastor of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Americas (ELCA) teaches New Testament at the Lutheran School of Theology at Chicago, Illinois, USA.

However, "we have gone backwards in the LWF," said Rossing, explaining further gender related issues with respect to LWF delegations, which did not respect the organization's prescribed gender representation guidelines. She cited visits or assessment teams that excluded not only women but also ordained women, yet the communion was endowed with women resources in all areas of work.

Seven women LWF Council members are attending the WPA, and sharing their experiences as women in the Federation's governing bodies. The Council, which meets every 12-18 months held its 22 to 27 October meeting at Chavannes-de-Bogis, with the theme "Upholding Human Dignity: Confronting Human Trafficking."

The 50 participants in the WPA include 34 women drawn from the Federation's seven regions. The pre-assembly participants are deliberating on the assembly theme, “Give Us Today Our Daily Bread” and on practical matters with respect to participation in the Assembly itself.

To emphasize sensitivity to issues that affect women during crises, Rossing spoke of another woman's experience as the only female participant in an LWF field visit after the December 2004 tsunami, when women turned to her about their need for underwear and sanitary towels, not daring to speak to men in the delegation.

Networking

The WPA is also focusing on issues of gender and power, and women’s participation in decision making in the LWF. Hamburg (Germany) Bishop Maria Jepsen, North Elbian Evangelical Lutheran Church, challenged Assembly delegates to elect a woman as LWF president at the forthcoming Assembly.

The President is the Federation's chief official representative and spokesperson, and presides at meetings of the Council, Executive Committee and Assembly. The person is nominated by the LWF regions during the Assembly meeting. The current president, ELCA Presiding Bishop Mark S. Hanson, was elected at the July 2003 Assembly as the eleventh person to hold the position since the Federation was founded in 1947. To date, no woman has held this position.

"We need a very good network of women and men who are open to women’s issues," Jepsen told the WPA participants, drawing from her own experience. Women also need to be good in networking in churches as well as in society, she said. Jepsen was elected bishop in 1992, becoming the first Lutheran female bishop worldwide.

LWF Executive Committee member and chairperson of the Program Committee for World Service, Ms Brenda Akpan from the Lutheran Church of Nigeria, supported Jepsen's call for the election of a female LWF president at the Stuttgart Assembly. She emphasized the need for the LWF to "keep providing" the many spaces for sharing in the organization, as they helped to link lay and ordained women and men, and the grassroots and leadership in the global communion. Akpan teaches journalism at the University of Calabar in Nigeria.

"I have learned a lot in the Council," said Ms Diadem Depayso, also LWF Executive Committee member as chairperson of the Program Committee for International Affairs and Human Rights. "I have talked a lot to the grassroots women about what I have heard and learned as a Council member," said Depayso, a nurse by profession, who was elected to the Council in 2003 as a lay person. The representative of the Lutheran Church in the Philippines urged outgoing women Council members to support fellow women who will be elected to the next LWF Council at the July 2010 Eleventh Assembly in Stuttgart, Germany. (757 words)

Journey | Women's Pre-Assembly

29.10.2009

Call for Increased Strategic Effort to Ensure Gender Equity in LWF Leadership

Pre-Assembly Participants Seek Stronger Women’s Presentation at Governance

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