One of the oft-touted doctrinal
foundations in the gospel of Jesus Christ is the emphasis on equality. Jesus
Christ espoused salvation and its temporal implications to all who would
listen. Likewise, he commissioned all who would listen to go forth and teach to
the world. Members of the Church of Jesus Christ have an injunction to
represent their faith to the world in all situations and to do their best to
bring the benefits of the gospel to all they meet. With this rhetorical basis I
approached the gender representation among the institution of religious
education at Brigham Young University.
Statistically speaking, in the
fall semester of 2012 there were 385 undergraduate religion classes taught
between BYU and the Salt Lake Center (by class, I measured individual sections
for each offered course). Of those 385 classes, only 60 were taught by women.
This equates roughly to a 15% rate of parity for actual class time.
Additionally, whether by
University policy or practice or, perhaps, by coincidence, there was a
significant statistical divergence in the rate in which individual faculty
members taught classes. Of the 53 classes taught by an instructor who only
taught one class, 43 of those classes were taught by males. The reason I use
the single class criteria is because BYU has a relatively large standing
faculty within the Religious Education Dept. On the whole, the majority of the
instructors teaching religion classes come from the Religious Education Dept.:
80 instructors out of 128 instructors are listed as being either full-time,
part-time, or visiting faculty of the Religious Education Dept. Interestingly
enough, the total composition of the Religious Education Dept., in terms of
gender, is 75 male faculty members and 17 females (92 faculty members total).
The composition of the instructors for the fall of 2012 in terms of those
representing the Religious Education Dept. is 63 male religion faculty members
and 17 female religion faculty members (80 faculty members from Religious
Education total). Five of the female religious education faculty members taught
only one class. Six of the male religious education faculty members taught only
one class. Something additional to notice is that all of the female faculty
members of the Religious Education Dept. are represented in the fall 2012 class
composition. Of those 17 faculty members, 12 teach more than one class. On the
other hand, 69 of the 75 male religion faculty members taught more than one
class. The composition of non-Religious Education instructors for males was 42
instructors, versus the six for females. Non-religion male instructors teaching
only one class for the semester numbered 37. Non-religion female instructors
teaching only one class for the semester numbered five.
With the data presented, I posit
that the religious education experience (which includes the Religious Education
Dept. and other faculty members) suffers from a significant lack of parity.
Besides the sheer statistical difference between female and male instructors,
the issue of resource utilization is critical. Those who belong to the
Religious Education Dept. and who are male are more likely to teach multiple
classes than their female counter-parts. Likewise, the number of non-Religious
Education Dept. faculty used for only one class is distinctly male. The
majority of these single-class instructors are teaching introduction-level
classes for Book of Mormon and New Testament. This indicates that for the
courses in which far more classes need to be taught, where the demand on the
Religious Education Dept. faculty is too high, the University fills positions
by pulling predominantly male faculty members from across the campus,
representing a wide-array of departments and disciplines. The female faculty
utilized outside of the Religious Education Dept. are predominantly from the
Humanities. The current composition indicates that the standard to be
considered for a position teaching a religion class at BYU is simply that you
are male. If you are female, you are more likely to be utilized if you are in
the Religious Education Dept.
This is
an issue because class time is a form of conditioning. The less class time
students spend with a female instructor acting as authority on spiritual subject
matter, the less students are going to consider women valid instructors on
spiritual subject matter. In the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints,
the number of female role-models leading the entirety of the church is slim,
despite doctrinal criteria which does not stipulate that females should not act as
role-models. As an organ of the church, BYU reinforces the idea that to be a
religious authority, one must be male, regardless of discipline of training or
current field of research. Women are few and far between, and the message
implicit in a predominantly male-staffed religious education experience is that
a course taught by a female is an anomaly or is deviant.
A
simple way to rectify this problem would be to evenly distribute the number of
one class positions per semester among all of the education departments. Or,
perhaps, to limit the number of one class positions to only certain
departments. Another very simple way to rectify this problem would be to hire
more female instructors. The flip-side of this is to reduce or dismantle the
religious education requirement at BYU. Any one of these solutions would be a
good start to closing the gender gap in religious education at BYU.
by Alex Christman
