Scratching the stained-glass ceiling, an increasing number of women hold leadership positions in the church. Here's a look at the gifts they bring and the challenges they face.

It is lunchtime on a Thursday, and Sharon Daly, vice president for social policy at Catholic Charities USA, talks hurriedly on her cell phone, the buzzing chaos of Washington's Union Station in the background. Daly, the first woman to occupy this position, squeezes a phone interview in between legislative meetings on Capitol Hill, with the future funding of programs like Section 8 housing and Head Start at the forefront of her mind.

A 25-year veteran in the field of legislative advocacy, Daly recalls feeling a little out of place at the 1984 bishops' meeting, the first she attended during her tenure in the public policy arm of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB). "There were hardly any women there. I just remember looking out into this sea of 300 white heads and gold chains," she says with a laugh. Despite her minority experience, Daly has never looked back. After holding a variety of legislative advocacy positions, she has devoted the past nine years to Catholic Charities' advocacy work on welfare reform, tax issues, and the federal budget.

Daly is but one in an expanding group of courageous, intelligent women leaders in the U.S. Catholic Church, women who have been named to top-level executive church jobs in the traditionally male-clergy-dominated areas of personnel, property, and policy.

These highly-educated women, most of whom have served the church loyally for decades, are the first women to hold positions such as chancellors, personnel directors, and pastoral administrators. Though they embrace a collaborative leadership style that resists self-promotion, these women are not the type to shy away from "firsts."

Mary Edlund, 55, the first female chancellor of the Archdiocese of Dallas, began her post with the daunting task of regaining the laity's trust after a major clergy sex-abuse crisis in 1997. Carol Fowler, 61, the first female director of personnel in the Archdiocese of Chicago, proudly recalls when Cardinal Joseph Bernardin asked her to take the position in 1991.

Valerie Chapman, 53, pastoral administrator at St. Francis of Assisi Parish in Portland, Oregon, stood in the designated pastor's space in Portland's cathedral as the archbishop confirmed her parish's high school students. Dolores Leckey, a senior fellow at the Woodstock Theological Seminary in Washington, D.C., now welcomes young women theology students into her office for informal mentoring sessions, drawing upon her rich 20 years of work experience as founding director of the Secretariat for Family, Laity, Women, and Youth at the USCCB.

Though most U.S. Catholics would not be surprised to learn that women comprise 83 percent of those engaged in parish work, many are not acquainted with the increasing number of women who hold high-level administrative church positions in dioceses, social service agencies, and faith-based organizations. These pioneering women carry with them an enormous amount of decision-making power by virtue of the positions they hold.

Daly, Edlund, Fowler, Chapman, Leckey, and many women like them are changing the face of the church's leadership. Their stories tell not only of the rich gifts and unique leadership styles that women bring to the church, but also of the challenges that come with being a "first" in anything.

A spirit of collaboration

Many women bring a collaborative leadership style into organizational structures that have traditionally operated hierarchically. "I used to teach math," says Fowler. "I treat issues like a word problem and try to be a problem-solver by working with others. Sometimes this means that I'll decide more slowly. If I have a disagreement to deal with, for example, between [religious educators] and principals, I'll pull together a committee to look at the problem."

Sister of Mercy Sharon Euart, 58, a canon lawyer in Silver Springs, Maryland, agrees that for many women leaders the decision-making process is as significant as the decision itself. "Women tend to be more attentive to things like process and dialogue. This can extend the decision-making process but can generate ownership, understanding, and support."

But Daly doesn't see this style as unique to women. "Before I saw a lot of leaders I assumed that collaboration was unique to women. Now that I have worked with lots of leaders I'm not convinced that's the case. Collaboration does not come any more naturally to me than to my male counterparts," she says. But collaboration is essential for influencing legislation. "It's a complex dance," she says. "You have to have relationships with both allies and opponents. The best leaders in this line of work are people who are collaborative. It doesn't matter if they are male or female."

Leckey found a collaborative leadership style helped in her work with the USCCB because "I wasn't competitive with the bishops like some men were. Many of them had gone to seminary together and suddenly one of their classmates was named a bishop, and one of them would be thinking, 'Well, I was smarter in liturgy than he was.' That wasn't an issue for me."

Relationship-building can be a challenge for women church leaders, especially when working with clergy who have access to informal social networks that often exclude women.

During her tenure as the first female associate general secretary at the USCCB, Euart says, "There were times I'd feel left out of the conversation because there had been previous conversations that had taken place at the priests' residence before work," she says. "I had to let [the priests] know that while it may have happened unconsciously, it was not helpful to the decision-making process. I learned to adapt to this and looked for more information when it was appropriate."

Answering the call

The majority of women who now serve in these high-level administrative positions speak out of many years of experience working in the church. Most believe that, in their case, familiarity has its privileges.

This was certainly the case for Edlund, who, in the wake of a major clergy sex-abuse trial, was given the responsibility of reviewing sexual-abuse allegations involving minors, reconstituting advisory review boards, and heading up the priest personnel board, which had historically been composed of all clergy. Edlund, who'd worked for the Dallas archdiocese since 1979, says she definitely "had an advantage in that I already had a good working relationship with the clergy. They were getting a known entity."

Euart agrees. Being the first female associate general secretary of the USCCB was a challenge, but "I felt that I moved into it smoothly because I was not completely unknown. I felt tremendous staff support and support from the bishops. This was important because one of my responsibilities was to supervise 10 departments, most of which were headed by priests."

Euart, who has been in church administration for more than 25 years, thoroughly enjoyed her time at the USCCB and was sometimes "in awe of the responsibility I had. I realized that the final 'yes' or 'no' that a pastor or bishop or superior may give was determined not only by that person's prudent judgment but by the influence of my perspective on a decision-making process."

Unfortunately for Euart, being a known entity wasn't quite enough. In the fall of 2000, after 13 years as the USCCB's associate general secretary, Euart was asked to leave her post. This was especially painful for her in light of the fact that she was, in the minds of many clergy and laypeople, the leading candidate for the general secretary post itself. When the U.S. bishops asked the Vatican if religious or other laypeople could be nominated for the job, according to a September 2000 article in the National Catholic Reporter, the answer from Rome was a resounding "no."

The general secretary serves as the day-to-day chief operating officer of the bishops' conference. Though only priests have held the post since the position's inception in 1918, canon law does not specify that this high-level administrative position must be held by a priest.