The Rev. Canon Kay Goldsworthy will be consecrated a Bishop in the Church of God on 22 May, in St George's Anglican Cathedral, Perth. She will be the first woman to become a bishop in an Australian church, although women have been appointed as bishops elsewhere in the Anglican Communion since 1989.
No-one who knows Kay Goldsworthy would question her spiritual, intellectual, pastoral or administrative capacity for episcopal ministry. She was one of the first women ordained deacon in 1986, and one of the first ordained priest, in 1992. She has held school, parish, diocesan and international positions.
But Bishop Goldsworthy will face significant pressures. Some will arise from the nature of a bishop's vocation. Others will come from those who cannot accept the legitimacy of a woman as bishop, and from those who have been waiting for this moment for decades.
The Anglican bishops, meeting this week in Newcastle, have worked hard on ways of accommodating opposition, but at local level this is unlikely to be a large issue. Opponents will have little direct contact with the new bishop.
Supporters of the ordination of women, on the other hand, can place unhelpfully high expectations on both the women concerned, and on the church as an institution. As time has passed, these pressures have eased, but may be reignited. Where clergy constitute a mix of women and men it is soon realised that holiness, effectiveness and pastoral sensitivity are not the preserve of either gender.
But deacons and priests function largely in congregations, where they become known personally. That they are male or female is less significant than their ordained identity. A bishop is seen much less regularly at parish level, and a new bishop is something of a curiosity to those who do not know them already. Bishop Goldsworthy may need considerable patience to help some supporters move beyond stereotypes.
And a bishop is a representative person, a personal sign of the wider church to the congregation. Here, many people retain the deeply-held presumption that men can represent both women and men, but women can only represent women. This is unlikely to be an issue in Goldsworthy's home diocese, where she has undertaken episcopal roles for some time. Yet it may present issues in relating to other parts of the Anglican Church, and ecumenically.
This situation will be eased considerably when another woman is nominated or elected as bishop in the near future — it is