Ordaining Women: The Diffusion of an Organizational Innovation

Why do denominations vary in the extent to which they resist ordaining women? Extensive loose coupling between formal policy and actual practice concerning female access to positions within religious organizations highlights the symbolic importance of rules about women's ordination. This paper focuses on these rules via an event-history analysis of U.S. Christian denominations' official adoption of women's ordination. The likelihood of a denomination beginning to ordain women is influenced by external political and institutional pressures, by cultural boundaries and network connections within the denominational population, and by internal organizational characterics.