A strong majority of Australian church attenders support women’s ordination.
Australian denominations and local churches take different positions on whether women are permitted to be ordained to vocations or roles that are open to men.
Since 2001, the National Church Life Survey has asked church attenders from across 20 denominations (Protestant and Catholic) about their attitude to the “ordination of women to be ministers, pastors or priests”.
A strong majority of attenders in the 2021 NCLS (76%) had no issue with the ordination of women. This was made up of 43% who indicated that they supported women’s ordination enthusiastically, 29% who didn’t see any problem with it, and a further 3% indicating that they supported it but not for their church.
Citation Pepper, M. (2023). Church attender attitudes to the ordination of women. NCLS Research Fact Sheet 23002. Sydney: NCLS Research.