Why Bishop Sarah Mullally wants more women at the top in the church
by Susan Devaney, Stylist Magazine:
Woman of the Week is Stylist’s weekly celebration of women making a difference to society. This year, Sarah Mullally made history after becoming the first woman ever to be appointed Bishop of London. Now, she’s keen to see more women in top ecclesiastical roles and do things differently.
It would be easy to assume that working within the grand, historic walls of a church would be worlds apart from making rounds on a nursing ward – but, as Bishop Sarah Mullally knows all too well, the two share a simplicity of similarities and challenges.
For one, many people enter churches and hospitals on some of the most difficult days of their lives. “There are great commonalities between nursing and being a priest. It’s all about people, and sitting with people during the most difficult times in their lives. In a sense, I use quite a lot of those skills,” Mullally says.
Mullally acquired these skills after working as a nurse for the NHS for decades – becoming the youngest ever chief nursing officer at the age of 37.
“My knowledge of people is fundamentally who I am,” she explains. “But also I’ve had to do a lot of the things within complex organisations. The NHS and the department of health are quite complex organisations, and the church isn’t straightforward either. My experience of people and of working in complex organisations has prepared me, in a sense, to be the bishop of London.”
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