Stellenbosch Theological Journal 2023, Vol 9, No 1, 1–18 DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.17570/stj.2023.v9n1.a33 Online ISSN 2413-9467 | Print ISSN 2413-9459 2023 © The Author(s) Mary-Anne Plaatjies-van Huffel: Trailblazing journey off the patriarchal beaten track 1 Miranda Pillay 2 University of the Western Cape mpillay@uwc.ac.za Abstract ere’s no doubt that Mary-Ann Plaatjies-van Huffel is amongst the women who “have moved into the academy, assumed religious leadership, and claimed their religious agency and heritage”. However, as a woman of colour Plaatjies-van Huffel’s life and work reveal that she had to navigate her leadership and exercise her agency along a well-beaten patriarchal beaten track. In this article I foreground some “first woman to…” milestones on Plaatjies-van Huffel’s trailblazing journey through the ecclesial ranks of the Uniting Reformed Church in Southern Africa (URCSA), highlighting that her academic research and community engagement reflect the social, economic, and political realities of racism and sexism, and its complex ramifications in post-apartheid South Africa. e main argument I make in this article is that, while women may no longer be excluded from leadership positions, it is second-generation gender bias that maintains the patriarchal beaten track in “the church”. us, I call for the debunking of second-generation gender bias which, I argue, will require a virtue of unctuousness. Keywords Mary-Anne Plaatjies-van Huffel; debunk; second-generation gender bias; patriarchy; church; virtue of unctuousness 1 Paper presented at “e Fourth Mary-Anne Plaatjies-Van Huffel Memorial Lecture”, Faculty of eology, Stellenbosch University, 11 August 2023. 2 Miranda Pillay is Extraordinary Professor at the University of the Western Cape, affiliated with the Desmond Tutu Centre for Religion and Social Justice which is jointly supported by the Lund Mission Society and the National Research Foundation of South Africa (Grant number 118854). e author acknowledges that the opinions, findings, and conclusions are those of the author alone, and the NRF accepts no liability whatsoever in this regard.