RECOMMENDATIONS

Respect and elevate women’s leadership

The Church needs to create and implement human resources policies that better reflect the role of women in our Church and society.

• Build hiring practices, create leadership roles, and offer mentoring opportunities directly for women in parishes, dioceses, and Catholic organizations.

• Actively recruit women for leadership positions, pastoral and finance councils (parish level), boards of directors and trustees, and executive positions.

• Publicly share pay ranges and benefits when positions are posted at the time of hiring.

• Review employee compensation to identify disparities and, where present, address by offering pay and benefit increases to ensure parity among employees.

• Use succession planning as an opportunity to advance women into positions of leadership at various levels of the organization, parish, or diocese.

• Adopt a generous, paid parental leave policy for those parents of a newly born, adopted, or fostered child, with a goal of at least 12 weeks, when possible.

• Provide paid leadership formation for women in leadership roles, similar to what is offered in seminarian and diaconate formation.

• Prioritize investment in women’s leadership formation similar to how the Church invests in seminarian and diaconate formation.

Expand leadership opportunities for women

There is a strong desire among the People of God for women to serve in greater leadership capacities within the Church, but there are still structural and cultural barriers that need to be addressed.

• Review existing leadership structures to identify strategic decision-making roles traditionally held by men that could be opened to women.

• Work to restructure at the local level, including considering revising job titles or creating new positions that allow more access to senior leadership for women, such as a Chief of Staff, or Chief Operating Officer.

• Create and promote pathways for women to participate in Church governance and pastoral care as well as administrative roles.

• Identify, open up, and welcome leadership positions in the Church that are outside of priestly ordination. Ensure women and lay leaders present at all decision-making tables of parishes, dioceses, and Catholic organizations.

• Review pastoral plans to specifically ask who is not represented or is prevented from serving in leadership.

• Set a minimum standard of how many women serve on councils, boards, and committees.

Promote women’s leadership roles in the Church

Transparency regarding how many women serve in Church leadership and the roles that are open to women are vital for building a co-responsible culture.

• Recognize the many women who are currently serving in leadership in the Church and Catholic organizations, and share data on their impact.

• Affirm and promote the number of women currently in leadership and the importance and benefit of women in leadership roles.

• Publicly highlight the contributions women are making in the governance and decision-making of the Church.

• Prioritize transparency in leadership by offering materials that can educate members of a faith community on Church teachings regarding women and the laity in leadership.

• Share the names and roles of all leaders on parish, diocesan, and organizational websites.

• Publish an annual report that shares the work of parishes, dioceses, and Catholic organizations and includes data for how many leaders are women, laity, clergy, etc.

• Regularly share stories of the women and lay leaders serving in parishes, dioceses, and Catholic organizations through channels of communication.

• Engage in the current discernment process of our Church, initiated by Pope Francis, surrounding women in the diaconate.

• Actively include women in liturgical roles, including speaking and reflecting during Mass and serving as lectors and Eucharistic ministers.

• Diversify the public voices who speak on behalf of the parish, diocese, or Catholic organization to include more women.

• Be intentional about tracking who is speaking on behalf of the parish, diocese, or organization to ensure that there is balance among the voices, paying particular attention to including women.

Include women in seminarian formation

To shift the leadership culture of the Church toward greater co-responsibility, the presence of women in leadership roles within seminaries and within the early and ongoing formation of clergy is critical.

• Intentionally and actively include women in governance, teaching, and formation at seminaries for ministers (including priests) and ministries working to influence the current clerical structure and culture in the Church.

• Set benchmarks, goals, and procedures to recruit and retain women as formators and instructors in seminaries.

• Ensure women are part of the governing body that determines curriculum and pastoral experience, spiritual formation, and moral development at seminaries.

• Involve women in the training and formation of new leaders, including ordained leaders, as a best practice to help build a new culture of leadership in the Church.

• Involve women in the decision-making process of whether a seminarian is fit for ordination.

• Establish an ordination requirement that includes evaluating the ability of candidates for priesthood to interact and collaborate with women on a professional level as equals.

• Establish an early and ongoing formation process for clergy that directly involves women.

• Incorporate women’s history in the Church into core seminary curriculum.

• Explore avenues for women in the local faith community to serve as mentors and advisors to seminarians during their formation and education.

• Require that seminarians are interacting with lay ecclesial ministers during their pastoral assignments.

• Develop a process for seminarians to receive feedback on their homilies from a group of laity that especially includes women.

Prioritize connection and community for women leaders

Women face unique challenges as leaders in the Church and often are the only woman at the table. Promoting women’s leadership requires also providing peer support, community, and means of connection for those who take on leadership.

• Acknowledge and be responsive to the unique challenges women face as leaders in the Church.

• Create and support spaces that offer women leaders connection, advancement, leadership development, access, counsel, information sharing, and community.

• Prioritize the mental and spiritual health of women leaders by offering access to ongoing formation and support both inside and outside of the Church.

• Provide specific opportunities for women leaders to gather and network at diocesan and national forums.

• Commit to a wider adoption of a Catholic women's theological initiative to foster pathways including mentorship, community action, intentional spaces, scholarships, strategies, resources, and a clear invitation to the table for women theologians.