Talking with female friends a few years ago, I said I was struggling with a situation and felt that part of the problem was that I was a woman and the others involved weren’t.

One of my friends said, “Maybe. It also might not have anything to do with that.” That statement wasn’t wrong. But later, as I thought about it, I felt dismissed and made to doubt my instincts.

In other situations, I’ve had women say to me with arms crossed and eyebrows raised in full mockery attack mode: “Really? You think women are still oppressed?”

In our special way as Anabaptists, we are acculturated to make ourselves small. Humility is a virtue, especially for women. We have become so accustomed to this that it can be hard to distinguish between faithful humility and internalized gendered oppression. Many women have difficulty naming it or believing other women when they name it.

Progressive Anabaptists are not immune to insidious sexism. On page 10 you’ll find a report about the experiences, both good and bad, of women leaders in Mennonite Church USA.

In Nice Churchy Patriarchy, Liz Cooledge Jenkins draws a line of comparison to John the Baptist, who, in speaking of Jesus, said, “He must increase, but I must decrease” (John 3:30). She says many Christians have applied John’s statement to everyone equally. She writes: “John’s statement . . . was not necessarily intended to apply to all of us — and certainly not in a gender-blind, colorblind, oppression-blind kind of way. Equal application of this sentiment across very unequal conditions only furthers an un-Jesus-like kind of oppression. People on the underside of a patriarchal system, or any other structure of dominance, don’t need to decrease any more.”

This sentiment has been playing over in my mind. It’s challenging for me to show up in the fullness of who God has created me to be without minimizing my worth. That might seem strange coming from an executive director. But I offer it as an example to say: This is real, and if you’ve felt this way, you are not alone.

In this issue we celebrate the lives of two women I had the privilege of knowing and greatly admired.

Lois Buckwalter (page 41) lived to be 102. She and her husband, Albert, worked in Argentina with the Toba-Qom people. They were part of a revolution in mission work that honored Indigenous culture and moved away from colonial practices.

Laurie Oswald Robinson (page 35) died in a tragic accident on April 8. A friend to everyone she met, Laurie wrote for AW often. In the days before her death, she was reporting a story for us about Frank Albrecht. We are grateful to Melanie Zuercher for picking up the project (page 36). We are honored to tell Laurie’s story and to publish the last article she worked on.