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Breaking the Stained Glass Ceiling

Turns out the ethics of Judaism have yet to manifest themselves in equalizing pay for men and women rabbis. In a recent study of “gender inequities” conducted by the Rabbinical Assembly, statistics show that Conservative women rabbis are making significantly less money than their male counterparts — about $40,000 less per year.

The study by the Rabbinical Assembly, an association of 1,550 Conservative rabbis, found that the mean total compensation of rabbis ordained since 1985 is $119,000 for men and $77,000 for women.

Moreover, the study found that female rabbis are paid less than men in comparable jobs — even after controlling for the size of the synagogue and number of hours worked. Among full-time rabbis who lead congregations with fewer than 250 members, for example, women earn an average of $21,000 less than men.

Rabbi Joel Meyers, the Rabbinical Assembly’s executive vice president and highest full-time officer, called the findings disturbing and pledged to lead “aggressive efforts … to ensure a level playing field” for women in the Jewish clergy.

“Other professions have reported similar data, which tells us we’re not unique,” Meyers said. “I hoped we were better.”

(Full story.)

Also visit Jewish Women Watching for more information on progressive campaigning to end social inequalities within the American Jewish communities.

7 thoughts on “Breaking the Stained Glass Ceiling

  1. Until now,
    I had thought that I’d noticed that the resident bloggers don’t post on shabbat and perhaps had thought to myself that even though not everyone’s ‘relig’, it’s not nice piece of respect to the tribe.
    Was I wrong? Was this just a coincidence? Is Ariela in Europe or Israel right now to warrant a post with a ‘SHabbat’ timestamp?

  2. some of us are shomer shabbos, some of us are not. some of us who aren’t shomer shabbos choose not to post on shabbos, some of us don’t.
    it’s not anyone else’s place to police the level of observance of another. it’s all about personal choice. stick that in your shesha and smoke it.

  3. Plus, the blogger has the ability to manually select a timestamp if s/he so chooses. So potentially, a blogger can make it appear that they was a’blogin on Shabbat, when they really was deep in prayer, and vice versa.

  4. Mob,
    wasn’t criticizing, just noticed it and thought that it was a nice touch on your/the site’s part, perhaps an unoffical policy, to at least, for show, let the site rest on Shabbat like Shabot6000 would probably approve.
    I don’t even think that Reb’s solution to manually manipulate the timestamp is a bad idea or hypocritical at all, it actually seems considerate. Don’t think anyone’s offended, certainly not me. Just wanted to bless y’all with one day away from the computer and enjoy the real world.

  5. Well, this story is certainly shocking!
    Discrimination and sexism running rampant amongst “enlightened” Conservative Jews?
    Time to reform.
    Oh, wait.
    There already is a Reform movement.
    Hmmm.

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