“I’m Quite Lucky!” A Comparative Study of Ordained Chinese Canadian Female Pastors in Hong Kong and Vancouver, Canada

The discussion of female leadership in Chinese Christian churches began in the 1800s. Chinese women were globally among the earliest Protestant women to be ordained, as local preachers in the Methodist Church in the 1920s, as elders in the Church of Christ in China in the 1930s, and as priests in the Anglican communion in 1944 and 1971. It seems like the discussion of female ordination should be a thing of the past, at least in Hong Kong. However, that is far from the truth. In a survey conducted by a team led by Teng Cheung Kai-yum in 2009, only 5% of the surveyed female pastors were ordained, while 10% of female pastors, while not ordained, worked as a senior pastor of their church. Furthermore, 60% of female pastors work in denominations that ordain women, while 40% do not. In her survey, Caroline Yih (2023) also finds that more than 89% of senior leadership roles were occupied by men, while 95% of those who ran children’s ministries were women. Yih discovers that churches in Hong Kong reserve nurturing and family- orientated roles for women, and only 5.45% of women become senior pastors. Why does female ordination, which has been in discussion since 1800s, continue to be a point of contention in 2024?
By studying existing quantitative and qualitative data collected by Teng Cheung, Yih, and Wai-ching Angela Wong, and incorporating that with interviews I conducted with two ordained Chinese Canadian female pastors, one pastoring in Vancouver, Canada, and one pastoring in Hong Kong, secondary qualitative data from Hong Kong Heritage Project and archival data, my aim is to analyze how my participants present their path in church ministry. Both of my participants are Chinese, female, middle-aged, single, mostly only English-speaking, pastoring in an English-speaking church, and Canadian. During our interviews, the female pastors repeat how “lucky” and “fortunate” they are in their context. Why do women have to be lucky to succeed, while men are simply owning their position of privilege? This sort of narrative negates the competence and hard work that these women have put in, and presents a world where it seems like women are just lucky to succeed, while men are qualified and earned their position due to their merits. I aim to argue that even when the female pastors claim they are lucky, I see the importance of nurturing environments, co-created with other male pastors in their contexts, spaces that appreciate their unique gifts and what they have to offer to their teams and their congregations. I put my observations from my interviews in dialogue with Wong’s (2018) argument of the “Chinese factor” that led to Hong Kong being the first Anglican Communion to ordain female pastors.

A glass ceiling continues to exist for female pastors in Hong Kong. Why do male pastors continue to be the norm? Why is egalitarian versus complementarian seldom discussed in Hong Kong? It is crucial to continue discussing female ordination, as awareness is essential to challenge existing hegemonic structures.