Congregational & Complementary Educators Cohort 6 (Virtual)

We invite you to join a cohort of Gender Equity Advocates specifically designed for and limited to leaders in the field of congregational learning. This cohort, which will bring together a maximum of 18 congregational educators who are prepared to serve inside their communities and across the field to shift hiring and employment practices and lead this work forward, will serve as a vanguard and as advocates to elevate the power of this work.  

As we know, this is a particularly challenging time for congregational educators: many of us are asked to take salary reductions, or are in danger of losing our positions--or already have. We must identify the inequities in this shift in order to reach for greater equity as our congregations change and evolve.  

Our work seeks to address gender bias in the Jewish workplace, with a specific focus on how employees are hired, retained and employed by organizations and how the relationship between employer and employee is constructed and grown. The GEiHP was created with the belief that reformulating hiring and employment processes are key leverage points for Jewish organizations as they begin to address gender biases. In order for the change we seek to become embedded in our communal organizations and our individual actions, we must dig deeply into cultures of bias and build capacity to recognize and correct these biases as we build support systems to align hiring practices with our Jewish values of equality and fairness.  

Let’s align our organizational values with our Jewish values--and model this for our congregations. Let’s examine our unconscious biases. Let’s design for diversity. We believe that hiring processes that are more gender-equitable will help organizations help women rise to positions of leadership and enable them to hire the best candidates at the same time--and that a rising tide will lift all ships, supporting all educators to be enriched and satisfied by their work, regardless of gender. 

The GEiHP has welcomed 75 Gender Equity Advocates to the field, engaged in changing the landscape of this work and trained to notice and call out bias in our organizational systems and networks.  

Now, it's time to turn ourselves to the specific inequities that we find inside our congregations where they affect our Jewish educators. So, for example....  

--All congregations describe themselves as inclusive, warm and welcoming, yet synagogue educators are often marginalized.  

--Educators are often not seen or treated as important members of the professional staff.  

--Educators are underpaid and do not receive the benefits that other professional staff members do.  

--Education is a pink-collar field, a career track often associated with women, and filled with a profound amount of bias linked to gender in a variety of important ways that affect our advancement, our job satisfaction, and our ability to change the lives of our learners. 

--In this moment, congregational educators are working overtime to craft innovative responses to the shift in our learning, creating virtual communities and crafting emergency remote instruction, designing online learning for congregations and supporting communal vision. And continuing to go unrecognized and unappreciated for their work.  

Note our schedule: 5 Tuesdays: 11/17, 24; 12/1, 8 and 15 Each session is 2 hours long, from 12:00 PM ET/9:00 AM PT   -    2:00 PM ET/11:00 PT

If you are ready to begin advocating for yourself and your colleagues, and this is a conversation that you feel committed to amplifying, we invite you to join us.  Participation in all sessions is expected. 

Are you a full time student studying in pursuit of a career in congregational learning, or a recently unemployed congregational educator? We have room for you. We are holding 2-3 seats for those who may be unable to afford to join us who fall into these categories, and would be honored to include you. Please contact us for more information and for a discount code you can use upon registration.

Upon the completion of our learning together, you will join a network of (currently) 75 Gender Equity Advocates from all over North America who are engaged in changing their organizations from the inside, working toward bias mitigation and changing our Jewish ecosystem. Join us!