The drawn-out, opaque process of choosing the next bishop of London will come to a head next week when the body that manages the appointment holds final interviews. But as inscrutable as the process is, one thing seems certain: the next number three in the Church of England is highly unlikely to be a woman.

The new, 133rd, bishop of London – a job that includes a seat in the House of Lords and membership of the privy council – is expected to be announced early next year, almost 12 months after the most recent incumbent, Richard Chartres, retired.



When Chartres stepped down, there were reports that the vicar’s daughter Theresa May, who is sent the chosen name by the Crown Nominations Commission (CNC), hoped the next bishop of London would be a woman. The names of senior female figures in the church – the bishops Rachel Treweek, Christine Hardman and Jo Bailey Wells; the dean of York Minster, Vivienne Faull; the chaplain to the House of Commons speaker, Rose Hudson-Wilkins – were bandied about.

But almost no one realistically expects a woman to be appointed given the strong opposition in some London parishes to female vicars, let alone to a woman occupying such a powerful position. The best progressives can hope for, they say, is the appointment of a man who is prepared to ordain women as priests – a radical break from Chartres, who declined to ordain clergy of either gender in order not to antagonise traditionalists.



Twenty-five years after the C of E general synod voted by the tiniest of margins to allow female clergy, the church recently trumpeted new data showing the number of women entering training to become priests in 2017 was the highest for a decade.



This year’s intake saw a 50-50 gender split, and a 19% increase in the number of female trainee priests compared to the year before. But the headline statistics mask a complicated and less encouraging picture. There are proportionately far fewer younger women being ordained; only 28% of stipendiary posts go to women and women are much more likely to end up looking after small rural parishes than big urban churches.

“It’s taken a long time to get here,” said Treweek, bishop of Gloucester and the first female bishop to sit in the House of Lords. But, she added, “the number of young women [entering the priesthood] is still low, and the number of women in senior positions is still low. We don’t have a very high number of women leading big churches. There are still assumptions; the norm is still male. Women still feel they have to prove themselves and justify themselves.”

In London, only 13% of paid posts are held by women. Other dioceses where the proportion is low include Chichester (12%), Blackburn (15%) and Winchester (16%), according to data from Women and the Church (Watch).



“In London, there are significant areas with people who don’t consider women to be proper priests,” said Rosalind Rutherford of Watch. She pointed to some evangelical churches which adhere to the theology of “male headship”, with women confined to supporting roles.

“There are very small numbers of women running important churches in London. There are lots of women out there who are perfectly capable of doing such jobs – including that of bishop of London – but there is still the unspoken assumption that women are there as men’s helpmeets,” she said.



“The fact that the C of E thinks it’s OK to live with inequality enshrined in its law doesn’t help the situation.”



Rutherford was referring to the C of E’s five guiding principles, which commit the church to “mutual flourishing” for all its traditions. In practice, they protect those who cannot accept women as priests – institutionalised discrimination, according to critics.



The principles attracted renewed attention earlier this year after Philip North, bishop of Burnley and an opponent of female priests, was promoted to the job of bishop of Sheffield. The move immediately triggered protests from those who said his appointment was unacceptable in a diocese where a third of clergy were women. Six weeks later, in a blow to the church establishment, North renounced the post, saying it was clear “my leadership would not be acceptable to many”.



“The church says to women: ‘Ooh yes, lovely, we want you to come and work for us – but you also need to know that it’s perfectly all right for some of your colleagues to say that simply because you were born in a woman’s body, you can’t do certain things.’ I find that very difficult,” said the Rev Canon Emma Percy, chaplain of Trinity College, Oxford.



The apparent favourite to emerge from next week’s CNC process is Stephen Cottrell, currently bishop of Chelmsford, a down-to-earth, straight-talking Essex boy. He has advocated more diversity in the C of E and was denounced as “unbiblical” by two churches in his diocese earlier this year after he backed prayers of thanksgiving for same-sex relationships. In the run-up to the 2014 synod vote, he argued for female bishops. Short of a female (or gay) bishop of London, for those yearning for equality within the church he may be the next best thing.

