p>Perhaps the most significant event in twentieth-century American Protestant churches has been the entry of tens of thousands of women into the church’s ordained ministry. How are these women’s experiences as ministers different from those of their male counterparts? What are their callings and careers like? What are their prospects for employment, income, and satisfaction? Based on a wealth of statistical data as well as in-depth personal interviews, this book offers the most authoritative information ever about the real experiences of clergy women (and men), along with anecdotes that show what the life of American clergy today is really like.

Patricia Mei Yin Chang is Consulting Associate Professor of Sociology at Stanford University in Stanford, California.

Adair T. Lummis is Faculty Associate in Research at the Hartford Institute for Religion Research in Hartford, Connecticut. She is a sociologist of religion who for over twenty years has been engaged in studies on clergy and ethnic groups in Christian and other faiths, as well as program evaluation and policy research for national church agencies, seminaries, and regional judicatories.

Barbara Brown Zikmund is President of Hartford Seminary in Hartford, Connecticut, where she is also Professor of American Religious History.