Church staff to get training to prevent bias against women

THE Church of England is to give its staff “unconscious bias training” amid fears that sexism is preventing women from becoming bishops.

It is hoped that the measure will help to ensure that half of the church’s leaders are female by 2030. Training has already begun in Church House in Westminster, London, and the London diocese will follow suit.

The Bishop of London, the Rt Hon and Rt Rev Dame Sarah Mullally, 57, hopes it will stop men hiring employees in their own image. She told The Times: “I certainly think that having women as priests enables different types of conversations that probably wouldn’t happen if you’re a man.

“My background as a nurse means people often talk to me in a different way. When I was at Salisbury Cathedral I’d stand with my fellow canons and they might get deep theological conversations [but] people would come up to me and talk about their varicose ulcers.”

The news comes weeks after the Rev Rose Hudson-wilkin, 58, was appointed as the Bishop of Dover, the Church’s first black female bishop.

The Bishop of Derby, the Rt Rev Libby Lane, became the Church’s first female bishop in 2015, a year after the General Synod voted to allow female bishops. Emma Percy, chairman of Women and the Church, said: “The Church of England needs to show that it is a church for all, where women are taken seriously, where women are good enough for leadership.”

At present, 25 out of 115 bishops in the Church in the UK are women.

Unconscious bias training is meant to expose people to learnt stereotypes that affect their decisions automatically and unintentionally.