Women with a Mission: Religion, Gender, and the Politics of Women Clergy. By Laura R. Olson, Sue E. S. Crawford, and Melissa M. Deckman. Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 2005. 190p. $37.50.

This book explores the role of women clergy in mainline Protestant churches and the rabbinate. It is based largely on 54 in-depth interviews conducted in 1998 in four U.S. cities (Indianapolis, Omaha, Milwaukee, and Washington, DC), but also includes considerable material from a much larger national survey of clergy. The authors are most interested in the “political” role of their subjects and in how their gender affects this role. They themselves define “politics” very broadly, as “actions taken to influence collective decision-making processes concerning resource distribution or the development and enforcement of shared values” (p. 14). But they do not impose this definition on their subjects. Instead, the clergywomen are asked about the issues and concerns that motivate them, what kinds of activities they consider most appropriate or helpful to address those concerns, and what their own involvement has been in such activities. In both the interviews and the national survey, around a third of the women indicated that gender “in some way” limited her ability to participate in politics. Three-quarters of the interviewees volunteered gender as a factor (either an asset or a liability) for political activity, or as a reason why particular issues were especially salient to them. But few mentioned either their denomination or its women's caucuses as a factor linking their gender with political involvement.