The 3 following paragraphs are extracted from the document to whet the appetite. - Leigh

"MOW's most effective allies were the mass media. (The local church media, not surprisingly, mostly supported the church hierarchy.) Their talks, media releases, initiatives and actions regularly received sympathetic coverage. The best sources of favourable coverage were visits by female clergy from overseas."

"The fear of MOW seemed out of all proportion to its message. There seemed to be a fear of something happening to God. It was really a fear of women and what women represent."

"The bishops were mostly sympathetic to MOW. On the other hand, the clergy (priests) turned out to be more hostile and powerful than expected. They were protecting their power."

Now for the whole article (also found here).

Most churches were and are run by men. For women of a church to demand equal treatment is a profound challenge to the church powerholders, to be resisted at all costs. This has nowhere been more true than in the Sydney Diocese of the Anglican Church, a very conservative and entrenched church bureaucracy. Two of the women who led a challenge to this bureaucracy were Patricia Brennan and Eileen Baldry.

As long as they can remember, the Anglican Church was part of Patricia's and Eileen's lives. They grew up in Sydney through the evangelical era of Billy Graham in the 1960s. The church was for them a way of becoming passionately involved with Christianity. At the same time, it seemed to be the place for asking serious questions. Anglicans have a tradition of intellect. Meetings with other Anglicans were a way to develop the mind, to belong, to find a mission in life. Eileen and Patricia became involved with the Evangelical Union and were closely associated with this group as they worked their way through university.

Eileen and Patricia, among others in their group, went overseas on various forms of mission work in the late 1960s and early 1970s. Patricia became a medical missionary in Africa; Eileen went to Nepal as a teacher in a mission school. They came back with a bittersweet understanding of Christianity, with real questions about the patronising, racist and culturally destructive nature of what many Christians were doing in other parts of the world. For these women, serious doubts were emerging about the nature of Christianity and the nature of their faith.

Most of all, they wanted to ask questions about the relations of power in the church bureaucracy, a matter quite separate from the teachings of Christ. A key question was the position of women in the church.

When institutions and organisations attempt to justify their behaviour with reasons, but operate politically, they are working on a model of power, not religion. The church operates on a military model. Yet the church promises an independent source of inspiration and power, namely God. Thus, the church has ideological power as well. A third source of power is the idea of the church as a family -- the very best that the social world can offer. Yet within these systems, there is little room for challenging attitudes. Once the women tried to raise issues about the role of women, the male clergy set up barriers to discussion and barriers to change.

The church inoculates members against attitude change. Patricia and Eileen, among other women in the Sydney Diocese, found that their questions were neither listened to nor answered. There was real resistance, both intellectual and emotional, to their need to raise these issues.

In about 1980, some of the clergy -- concerned that the Anglican Church be able to respond to issues raised by the feminist movement -- asked a group of women to discuss the questions of women's liberation and the role of women. At those meetings, the seed was sown to develop a reform group. The women read widely on feminist literature, on the Vietnam war, and other issues of the day. Patricia did a survey of women in the Sydney Diocese which revealed that a far greater number of them than they had previously thought were concerned about the lack of participation by women in the church bureaucracy as well as in the spiritual activities of the church. These were not just radical women; they were women of all political persuasions.

In 1983, at a special meeting, the Movement for the Ordination of Women (MOW) was formed. The first aim in MOW's constitution was to 'move the Anglican Church of Australia to admit women to the ordained ministries of the church'.

Both Patricia and Eileen were founding members of MOW. When it leaked out that a reform group had started, the doors to negotiation rapidly closed. The power of the hierarchy lay in not listening to the women. People opposed to MOW refused to talk to members of the group, and pretended they did not exist. Power lay in the church committees, in the rhetoric of theology, in money, and in the male hierarchy of church positions.

Although not all the women were inspired by feminism, the group developed, through readings and discussion, a language with which the bureaucracy could be challenged. Another vital factor was the realisation that the struggle had a purpose which was passionate, a matter of life and death. If a woman, with her faith and her mission, is not relevant to the church, then who is? The restriction placed on women by the male-dominated church was like a foot placed on someone else's oxygen supply.

MOW used five main strategies to bring about change: education, persuasion, media, demonstrations, and working through the church bureaucracy. Education allowed them to inform: to find arguments from both the literature and from the Bible, and to print and distribute papers. Persuasion became easier after the MOW went national in 1985, and membership grew dramatically. This support was vital. However, rational argument alone wouldn't have got MOW very far.

MOW's most effective allies were the mass media. (The local church media, not surprisingly, mostly supported the church hierarchy.) Their talks, media releases, initiatives and actions regularly received sympathetic coverage. The best sources of favourable coverage were visits by female clergy from overseas.

Demonstrations assisted the media campaign and vice versa. Symbolic actions were vital to MOW's campaign. For example, on an anniversary of Martin Luther's famous challenge to the Catholic Church, MOW put its demands on a church door. This was wonderful symbolism and was lapped up by the media. Patricia thinks they should have been more courageous and nailed the demands on the door, just like Martin Luther. Instead, the women, afraid of what people would think if they damaged church property, stuck the demands on with removable gum.

There was a cost that came along with the intense media interest in MOW. The media wanted a single spokesperson, and this usually was Patricia. Yet MOW, which tried to work as a group of equals, contained many talented women. The media's constant focus on a few MOW 'leaders' was therefore a source of internal tension.

The fifth strategy was working through the internal bureaucracy, by attempting to join official bodies such as committees, synods, etc. This did not last long -- they were stopped by the Sydney Anglican Church League, which was vehemently opposed to the MOW members. Patricia was in a ballot to become a member of the National Synod, but when the position came up, she was passed over. The Anglican Church League controlled all the committees in the Sydney Diocese, and put out a voting ticket for every Synod. It controlled finance and was very influential over appointments within the church.

The struggle to change the bureaucracy came to a head in 1992, when the National Synod voted to admit women as ministers of the church. Despite last minute actions from the Sydney Diocese representatives to stop a secret ballot, the mood was against the Sydney Diocese and the vote for women's ordination was passed by two votes by the clergy. It is now acceptable, except in the Sydney Diocese, to consider women as equal to men in the church. However, the bureaucratic structure is unchanged, and there is still a long struggle ahead.

The fear of MOW seemed out of all proportion to its message. There seemed to be a fear of something happening to God. It was really a fear of women and what women represent.

On reflection, the women realised the importance of picking a single issue that is potent symbolically (in this case, getting women ordained). None in the group thought at the beginning that ordination was all they were aiming for. The deeper challenge was to the patriarchal nature of the church, not only in decision making and control in management, but also for example in elements of the service.

The bishops were mostly sympathetic to MOW. On the other hand, the clergy (priests) turned out to be more hostile and powerful than expected. They were protecting their power.

It would have been easy for the women to leave the church and start their own reformed church -- and many of their opponents would have welcomed this. Yet, in a voluntary organisation such as the church, to have any chance of success it is absolutely essential for challengers to remain members of the organisation.

MOW did not set out to challenge the actual structure of the church. It aimed to open up access to the positions of authority, not to undermine authority itself. Of course, many male elites of the church did not see the difference, which is why they felt that a challenge to their positions was a challenge to the church itself, and even to God. Questioning the structure of the church is perhaps the next stage of a feminist challenge, which might include feminist theology. But for such a challenge to succeed, it may be helpful for MOW to shut up shop and make room for other initiatives.