When traditionalists mutter that dark forces are plotting to undermine the tradition of men-only bishops in the Church in England, they are closer to the truth than they know.

The first woman bishop is likely to be drawn from a group of senior Anglican women priests that goes by the name of Darc - deans, archdeacons and residentiary canons - and meets twice a year to offer mutual support.

Since women were first ordained in 1994, about 4,000 have been priested. Of those, nearly 3,000 are still active in the ministry, representing about a third of the total number of serving priests. Women priests are likely to outnumber men within a few years.

To these women, and many of the worshippers who have experienced their ministry, an episcopacy without women is unthinkable. One by one, the provinces of the Anglican Communion are succumbing. In 1988 the first women bishops were elected in the United States and New Zealand. Barbara Harris, the American bishop, turned up to that year's Lambeth Conference.

This year Kay Goldsworthy became the first woman bishop to be consecrated in Australia, in the Diocese of Perth. However, in the Diocese of Sydney, the Bishop, Dr Peter Jensen, has said that if she were to visit he would not let her function as a priest or bishop.

Elsewhere, the picture is also one of division. While most of Africa remains opposed to gay ordination, women have been priested in Kenya, Uganda, Rwanda, South Africa, Tanzania, Burundi and Sudan.

The most senior women in Darc, tipped as likely bishops, are Canon June Osborne, the Dean of Salisbury, and Canon Vivienne Faull, Dean of Leicester. The group, which started life a few years ago, has another 13 archdeacons and 20 residentiary canons, including Canon Jane Hedges, at Westminster Abbey, and Canon Lucy Winkett, at St Paul's Cathedral.

Canon Celia Thomson, of Gloucester Cathedral, the convenor of Darc, said that they were all concerned to see women become bishops so that the Church can truly reflect the place of both men and women in God's creation. But they were also concerned that a woman bishop should have true authority in her diocese.

She and the other senior women will be scrutinising the new proposals for complementary bishops to ensure that they will not offer traditionalists a model for flouting the authority of future women bishops. Canon Thomson said: “There are so many parishes that would just not have a priest if it was not for the women serving the Church. Those who have experienced the ministry of women priests cannot really understand why it is all taking so long.”

Even if the passage of the legislation and its code of practice is smooth, it will be the end of 2011 at the earliest, and more likely the spring of 2012, before a woman can become a bishop, and then there would have to be a suitable vacancy. A woman would also have to be successful in the Church's nominations process.

It is almost nine decades since the subject of women's ordination was first put on the agenda of the Lambeth Conference, the ten-yearly gathering of the worldwide Anglican Communion's bishops and archbishops.

That vote, in 1920, and a subsequent vote in 1930, were both lost. An archbishops' commission in 1935 also found against women's ordination. But with the war, women's emancipation and the heroism of women in promoting the war effort at home and abroad, the tide began to turn.

In 1944 Bishop Ronald Hall, in war-torn Hong Kong, ordained a female Chinese deacon, Florence Li Tim-Oi, as a priest. The Lambeth Conference returned to the subject in 1968. This time it did not reject the idea outright, but found the arguments both for and against “inconclusive”. Three years later the Anglican Consultative Council, the most senior advisory body in the Anglican Communion, chaired by Dr Michael Ramsey, then the Archbishop of Canterbury, passed a resolution advising bishops that, with the approval of their province, they could ordain women to the priesthood.

As with the debate on homosexual priests, the United States took the lead. In 1974 there were worldwide protests from Anglo-Catholics when three bishops “irregularly” ordained 11 women. Just a year later the General Synod voted that there would be “no fundamental objection to the ordination of women to the priesthood”. There were still many pews to jump over.

The first women were ordained deacon in 1987. Five years later the General Synod in London voted to admit women to the priesthood in a passionate and lengthy debate, where women in turn wept and sang hymns outside the synod. The necessary two-thirds majority was achieved by one vote when one woman, a former opponent, switched sides at the last minute.

Traditionalists were pacified by the creation of “flying bishops”, correctly known as provincial episcopal visitors. Parishes were given the option to become women-leader-free zones under the care not of their diocesan bishop, but of one of the flying bishops.

The women waited a few years, gathered their resources once more, and then, in 2000, Archdeacon Judith Rose put down a motion in the General Synod asking for a bishops' working party to look at issues of women in the episcopate. In 2005 the synod voted to remove the legal obstacles to women bishops. It then became a question of how to appease the Catholic wing without rejecting it, or legislating more discrimination against women into the Church.The new report, with a draft of the legislation and a draft code of practice, will be much debated but the women have got what they wanted, which is true authority in their dioceses and “flying” bishops who cannot overarch them to a higher authority. The Church has dreamt up one of the most complex recipes for an Anglican fudge that has ever been created. It is a magnificent confection, one that will fuel many more decades of debate in the Synod and beyond.

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