Sick leave among female ministers in Norway much higher than among men

Female priests and other church personnel are 20 per cent more often absent than women in other sectors. In 2022, women were, on average, for more than one working month on sick leave.

In society as a whole, women are on sick leave 60 per cent more often than men.

At the same time, the church’s male employees are less sick than the average man.

The Norwegian Women’s Theological Association sees this are a “warning to the management”, according to Vart Land.

In 2022, sickness absence in the Church of Norway was 7.2 per cent. This means that each employee in the church was on sick leave for an average of 17 working days last year. According to Dagen, the male employees in the church were on sick leave 5.1 per cent.

“Priests opposing female colleagues should consider their future”

27-07-2022

The sickness absence figures show a significant increase from 2021, and a far higher absence than the status in 2018 and 2019 – the years before the corona pandemic broke out.

The figures concern the employees of the legal entity The Church of Norway (Den norske kirke, DNK), which is the employer of the employees of the diocesan council and the central church, as well as the bishops and most of the priests.

Closer look

“This was new to me”, says Beate Iren Lerdahl, who heads the Norwegian Women’s Theological Association, in Vart Land. She cannot remember that the big difference between men’s and women’s sickness absence has been problematic in the church in the past, and she reacts to the fact that the difference is so significant.

“The church obviously needs to take a closer look at why women find it more difficult to hold a job in the Church of Norway than in the rest of society.”

She asks for a deeper examination of the problem. But before that, she shares that the “church is a very hierarchical structure, which for a very long time has been dominated by men’s way of thinking, working and being.” That could have influenced the “work culture”.

Another survey from 2021 revealed that one in three female priests had experienced unwanted incidents because of their gender, Lerdahl says.

Young children

The Church Council’s director Ingrid Vad Nilsen says the sick leave figures are “disturbing”. She thinks the sickness absence might have to do with the health of young children. That usually hits the mother earlier than the father. “But that is just speculation and does not explain why the church is higher than the public sector.”

Men-only priesthood might come to an end in Danish parishes

01-09-2022

After ten years in the priesthood, Annette Dreyer knows that the workload is high and can be “all-consuming”, she says in Vart Land. The best advice came a from a wise priest who said that when you have so much to deal with existentially, where everything must be meaningful and important, it is essential to do something that you find relaxing.