When, however, someone with a woman’s body gets out of line, moves out of place, she calls into question these principles of the incarnate social order, thus calling into question the corporeal, symbolic, and social submission of subordinate women (Cassell 1988, 99)
7.1 Priesthood and gender: redefining priesthood 164 7.2 Gendered models of prison chaplaincy 165 7.3 Gender, embodiment and perceived prison service culture. 170 7.4 Gendered cross-postings and ministry to prisoners. 179
7.5 Chaplains and a ministry of touch 182
7.6 Women’s ministry to women 183
7.7 Chaplains’ gendered emotional responses 184
7.8 Sexism and harassment 186
7.9 Familial surrogacy and disclosure of abuse 187
7.1 Priesthood and gender: redefining priesthood
Women have come to ordained chaplaincy relatively recently, following the ordination of the first women priests in England in 1994 and Wales in 1997. In 2013 the Representative Body of the CIW voted to authorize the
consecration of woman as bishops, leaving only the COE of the four British Anglican churches in the anomalous position of restricting women’s ordained ministry. Before then women assisted in prison chaplaincy in a lay capacity or as deacons, unable to celebrate the Eucharist except by extension, their situation reflecting that in the COE. Women priests began to join the Prison Service Chaplaincy within a year of the first ordinations. Sani and Reicher (2000, 105) make it clear that this development implies a re-examination of all priesthood, not only that of women. In this chapter, more than any other, I
165
am aware that different researchers would give different prompts from different perspectives and possibly elicit different narratives. (Gelsthorpe 2009, 879; Earle 2013, 18)
7.2 Gendered models of prison chaplaincy
Gender has not so far been examined as a feature in the lives of female prison chaplains. This may be due to a paucity of research into Anglican prison chaplaincy and the relatively recent priesting of women. A few women who were licensed readers or deacons had served as chaplains before these dates but the overwhelming majority of Anglican chaplains had been white male priests who were also “the” chaplain in their institution as required by the Prisons Act of 1952. The invisibility of women chaplains in the research is similar to the invisibility of policewomen in Martin’s research (1996, 510- 511). Gender issues, however, involve male chaplains and other prison staff as well as women. Sim (1994, 100-101) has highlighted the gradual
gendering of prison studies resulting from gay and feminist studies, before which “these studies …. concentrated on men as prisoners rather than
prisoners as men.” (italics in the original). One such study (Thomas 1972, xv) was an early analysis of the prison officer’s role prior to the Prison Service cross-posting policy in 1982 (Crawley 2004, 16), before which no female staff were employed in male prisons. Thomas felt able in 1972 to analyse the officer’s role without studying women officers or the prisons they worked in: “Except …… where I specifically mention them, they are usually excluded.” It is equally unsurprising that even so complete a description of prison
chaplaincy as that by Atherton (1987), writing from the perspective of a RC chaplain, should refer to prisoners and chaplains as generically male, despite the many women active in RC prison ministry.
There are, therefore, apart from Cowburn (1998), no theoretical reference points relating to women prison chaplains and few to other female staff in prisons; Crawley (2004, 191-196) and Liebling and Price (2001, 64-66) recount opinions expressed by and about women officers as part of a wider study of prison staff, Crawley noting references to sexist behaviour by male staff.
166
More detail and analysis are found in earlier literature about policewomen encountering “canteen culture” and its concomitants (Martin 1996, Brown 1998, Newburn & Stanko 1994.) There has been more research in those areas since the 1990s but these studies remain relevant because they reflect the responses of women entering upon a relatively new situation in which males predominate, and their strategies for coping with a milieu sometimes ambiguous and sometimes hostile. Cowburn (1998) writes not only about women officers but about female probation officers; although the latter, unlike chaplains, are not employed by the Prison Service, their situation is analogous in being based full time in prisons but without immediate custodial or disciplinary functions.
In addition to these I have found Cassell relevant in her study of women surgeons in the USA, especially her assertion that “gender is a process that is ‘negotiated and ‘done’”,(1998,48) as a way of avoiding the trap of biological determinism. I therefore write about gender not only as a given but also as a socially constructed mode of perceiving male and female chaplains. Cassell’s reference (1998,42) to female fighter pilots as women in “the wrong body” is echoed by two of my respondents, Heather and Penny (7.3), who set out to implement Prison Service systems more rigorously than their male
colleagues and perceive in this a performative superiority, not merely
equality. Bagilhole (2003, 373) notes this as a characteristic of some women clergy within the Church:
In some cases women are adopting traditional male roles.
Experiencing the pressures the men have experienced, having to play the male ‘games’. Doing the job ‘like a man’, using male role models. The danger is that we may leave behind and/or compromise our femaleness.
The two respondents mentioned above have a concept of how certain tasks should be performed but perceive men to be failing in these areas so that they effectively eschew male role models. Secondly, it is not helpful to think of a male chaplain as necessarily fulfilling a stereotypically masculine role, even in a male prison. Tait (2008, 80) and Sim (1994, 112-113) comment on the difficulty some male staff experience in trying to offer covert and counter
167
cultural care to prisoners. Scott (2012, 201) proposes a four part typology of prison officers, careerist, humanitarian, disciplinarian and alienated
‘mortgage payer’. Scott records that some of his “humanitarian” respondents were referred to by other officers as ‘care bears’ (a reference to infantilised and infantilising pictorial images) and that “In the research prison
humanitarian officers were relatively marginalised, experiencing hostility from other members of staff who believed they were ‘outsiders’ or not proper prison officers.”
This typification accords with one aspect of the implicitly structural analysis of a “Prison chaplain – Prison Officer Continuum” offered by Todd and Tipton in which chaplains were perceived as,
“being ‘kinder’, more ‘sympathetic’ characters and thus more inclined and suited to pastoral listening and counselling work…… prison officers being harder and not very good at dealing with emotion and prison chaplains softer and not particularly effective at discipline and control.” (2011, 25-26)
Whilst the culture of each prison is different and recruitment from the armed forces has reduced, it is possible to see the male chaplain offering a mode of care which is more ‘feminine’ when seen against a stereotypically masculine approach and which may not be available to many male officers (Tait 2008, 85). Tait cites Pollock’s suggestion of a “broad difference that can be defined as a masculine authoritarian approach and a feminine personal or caring approach.” (2008, 69; emphasis in the original.) I am not, therefore, working from a position of biological determinism. Indeed, Tait (2008, 69-70) cites research which suggests that institutional sexism rather than gender role differences seems to account for different role fulfilment between men and women. I have found that certain styles of engagement with female and male prisoners are available to women chaplains based on perceptions of gender and role, but I have also found a significant incidence of sexist conduct ranging from low level innuendo to verbal harassment. My data, though, do not support any causal link between the two sets of findings so that the research cited by Tait appears not to hold good for women chaplains in the
168
prison context although there may be a low level of institutional sexism imported from the Anglican church.
Bagilhole’s papers (2003 & 2006) illuminate the harassment, both overt and implicit, which some women chaplains have experienced. She frames her discussion within considerations of structure, culture and action and explores them as they impact upon the institution itself as well as upon the women themselves (Bagilhole 2003, 374). However, I suggest that not all she says of women clergy who encounter the “gender subculture” (2006, 1) is applicable to women chaplains in HMPS. She writes of “structural
disadvantage and cultural hostility” citing pay policy, promotion practice and working hours as structural barriers in the Church. As one respondent, Harriet, notes, the published and enforced policies of HMPS appear to remove these barriers; at the same time, there is no obvious career progression for chaplains of either gender in HMPS. In this sense, clergy who join HMPS are opting out of the more developed career ladder of the COE in return,
intentionally or not, for civil service terms and conditions of employment. That said, three of the eight area chaplains in 1996 were women while the two most recent chaplaincy training officers are women. This could be thought to be consistent with the appointment of more women governors to male prisons. To enshrine equal opportunities in institutional policy is not, however, to eradicate or weaken cultural hostility and its potential to inhibit a full expression of work and ministry. Some of the respondents cited below experienced such hostility; other women leaders and managers in HMPS have encountered similar opposition and the clerical collar has not shielded some women chaplains from similarly gendered opposition although it may well have muted it in some degree. It seems to be truer for some women
chaplains than others that “gender relations are continually enacted within organisational culture.” (Bagilhole 2006, 8)
It should be said that all the women respondents emphasised positive aspects of working with male colleagues and even in several cases an apparent acceptance of the prevailing culture. This is consistent with Tait’s finding that women officers developed strategies for dealing with
169
harassment: “Sexist and sexual banter was accepted as part of the job, unlikely to change and something to adapt to rather than resist.” (2008, 75) This, though, does not include the perceptions of women who cannot adapt to such a working environment, a point made by another respondent, Heather: “I am sure there are women that don’t stay for all sorts of reasons but I think that some just aren’t prepared to put up with that kind of culture and I don’t think that institutionally it has been tackled at all.”
I discussed gender with 12 respondents, 8 of them female. Such issues are significant in the daily lives of some chaplains, but not all. My research shows higher gender consciousness in male chaplains working in female
establishments, manifested in a concern for maintaining proper physical boundaries and a respect for the privacy needs of women of the kind
mentioned by Carlen’s respondents (1998, 138-145). I detected no parallel anxiety amongst female chaplains who work in male prisons. Female chaplains in female prisons also articulate an awareness of gender, possibly because the women’s estate is so much smaller than the male estate,
producing a heightened awareness of difference; indeed, the women’s estate as a discrete sector ceased in 2007. The official discourse of the Prison Service and many commentators assumes male prisoners, or is perceived to do so by some women chaplains; at meetings and conferences which I attended, discussion was exclusively grounded in data from men’s prisons. The cessation of the women’s estate as a separate sector meant that meetings of chaplains in women’s prisons were severely curtailed and the two posts of area chaplain to women’s prisons disappeared. Since women account for only 5% of the prison population there is a degree of inevitability about this. Male chaplains working in male prisons – with the exception of Roger (8.5.5) - seem not to be aware of gender in the way that female chaplains in women’s prisons are, possibly echoing the acceptance of chaplains and their pastoral role in other predominantly male situations such as the armed forces, single sex schools, and even football clubs. Cowburn suggests a hegemonic form of masculinity: “Although prison culture is not homogeneous and cultures can
170
vary across establishments ….. it is this masculinity that appears to dominate male prisons.” (Cowburn 1998, 235-236)
7.3 Gender, embodiment and perceived prison service culture.
Female chaplains associated gender with other issues whilst for male respondents the issue was more clearly bounded by considerations of physicality. At one end of a spectrum of perceptions this awareness for Harriet (chaplain in a male establishment) was expressed in her reference to the Prison Service as an equal opportunities employer:
Compared with the Church we work in an organisation where the employer sees us as the same as the men…… looking at the prison service as opposed to the chaplaincy side of it, the women generally can pretty much go as far as men, can’t they?
She acknowledges androcentric assumptions which underpin the working of HMPS but seems to experience them as enablers rather than disqualifiers, in contrast to the COE which limits the extent of women’s career aspirations. An opposing perspective is expressed in Heather’s weariness and
exasperation with what she sees as local and institutional sexism in prisons: “Of all the strands of diversity in the prison service I think that gender is the one that hasn’t been tackled at all……... I really don’t think the Prison Service has actually tackled it at all, sexism.”
Apart from these twice reinforced assertions, Heather speaks of a prison officer repeatedly asking her if she wanted a body search, a form of harassment similar to that noted by Cowburn (1998, 241). Sexual
harassment was also apparent when a chaplaincy colleague, a member of Forward in Faith, which rejects the priesthood of women (Sani & Reicher 2000), asked her on several occasions, “Can I go through your drawers?” to get his cigarettes. This again echoes Cowburn (1998, 242) who comments: “The majority of these behaviours are acts designed to embarrass, intimidate and denigrate the female worker by sexually objectifying her.” It also echoes Martin’s observations (1996, 511) about the power/control discourse which, in this case, is not apparently linked to any misogynistic element in Prison Service culture so much as to issues of gender and authority within the
171
Anglican church, so that sexual objectification is linked with an implicit rejection of the validity of Heather’s clerical orders. There is also an issue of embodiment in that male priesthood is of necessity an embodiment defined by its maleness; for this harasser, then, Heather embodies a physical and theological anomaly which he resolves by denigrating the same physical characteristics.
Cassell (1998,99) makes the same point in relation to female surgeons in the USA: her words are possibly even more pertinent to women priests than to women surgeons since, for anglo-catholic clergy, the priest stands in the place of Christ and mediates his body and blood with the words, “This is my body, do this in remembrance of me.” Harassment such as Heather
perceived denies the validity of her orders and implies an embodied inferiority not only socially but within a specific divine model of creation. Whilst the Anglican churches in England allow for practice based on gender discrimination, the Prison Service does not: had Heather chosen to report the behaviour the colleague would have been dismissed, not only for the sexual harassment but for the discrimination implied by it.
She tells two stories of attempts to kiss her by two more senior chaplains. For her, there appears to be at least a partial association between authority (more senior chaplains in this case) and sexism so that gender and status issues are bound up together:
But it feels like, particularly those again who are in authority, that at that point you are thoroughly slapped down and actually you are really; you have no right to have an opinion or object to anything and who are you to think what way somebody should or shouldn’t touch you? I think there is a large element of that around, definitely. Elsewhere Heather acknowledges that she has not experienced actual physical harassment but the forcefulness of her expression was unique on this subject although her experience was not. She has worked in both male and female prisons; her responses have much to say about her perception of sexism in male prisons but little about her experience in women’s prisons apart from the lack of sexist innuendo as a model of how working in a prison
172
could be. Offered the opportunity by her female line manager to formalize her objections Heather declined,
At which point I thought no, you are saying, “Why do you feel so strongly about this?” and not actually accepting or hearing what I am saying and I will be writing you something that you are never going to read and it is never going to go anywhere.
Heather thinks that her manager has absorbed the values of a milieu where abuse and harassment are accepted and unremarked to the extent that she would not act on the report. Cowburn notes a similarly fatalistic attitude amongst female prison officers and prison based probation officers: “Where workers realised that there was an issue that needed addressing at a policy level, there was a degree of pessimism or fatalism that the overall culture of the prison was not amenable to change.” (Cowburn 1998, 244)
Cowburn’s respondents recounted a wider range of harassment than mine admitted to me and Heather explains that she had not experienced physical abuse; nevertheless, her discouraged response is consistent with the earlier research.
Other female chaplains acknowledged a male (and subliminally violent) culture across the Service, typified by swearing and for some, though not for all, by sexist remarks. Alexandra, chaplain in a male local prison, echoes Cowburn’s (1998, 243) and Tait’s respondents (2008, 75), recognizing this almost as an inevitability:
I think that you do have to be (part of the culture of the place) to a certain extent as prison chaplain, I mean if you don’t become part of it then you are not going to, you are not going to be accepted. I mean I know that there is no way that I am going to be part of it in lots of ways. I mean, most of the officers are men and so you are out of that for a start. Out of what? Well I am not a man so… Yes I know but… Well I can’t be in that kind of …….. because I am not like that anyway; it is not my way of going about it. I mean I think yes, if you wear a collar round your neck that puts you another step away from normality doesn’t it, really, most of the time anyhow; they are testing you out to see whether you mind them swearing in front of you or whatever it happens to be. And do you? Well, no not really, I mean I don’t swear in front of them but no, it is part of the culture of the Prison Service I think.
173
Elsewhere Alexandra articulated her reflections more cogently and
coherently than many respondents: here, however, she seems less assured of her identity both as woman and chaplain in a largely male establishment, foreshadowing Imogen’s apparent anxieties and uncertainties (this section). She suggests that it is possible to exist in the institution without becoming enculturated. Her words imply a distance which arises from factors, of which gender is one (“Well I am not a man”) in association with her status as
chaplain (“another step away from normality”), and her own personal values