With all the mayhem in Washington DC happening right after a new senate and congress was seated (and with a new president set to be sworn in next week), I’ve been thinking a lot about how our female representation works in the church. Politics are crazy right now, but at least I know that the people representing my state in the federal government were chosen by the voice of the majority here, and that I was allowed to have a say in that.
On the other hand, when it comes to my church and relief society representation at high levels, I don’t have any contribution or control over that, and the number of leaders who are female like me are not represented equally at any level.
You see, in the United States government, states with larger populations are given considerably more representation in congress, which makes logical sense to me – the more people there are in one place, the more of them you invite to the table to represent their interests in decisions that directly affect them. With two senators per state, they’re also guaranteed a voice in the capitol, regardless of size. Yet do we do that in church councils, with the representation of women?
No, we definitely do not. Women are 50 percent of the population, yet we regularly fill up between 10 and 25 percent of seats at stake and ward councils, and as low as 0 to 15 percent on general councils. Throughout the history of the church, many committees and meetings have been for priesthood holders only (such as the Council on the Disposition of Tithes, or Repentance and Church Membership Councils), and others have recently invited only one single woman on to them (such as the Priesthood and Family Council or Missionary Executive Council). This wouldn’t work well for a fair representative government, and I don’t think it works ideally anywhere, especially not in a church that affects our daily lives so intimately.
Frustratingly, there are also no women in positions of true authority in the church. General authorities are only men. While we do have female leaders and female general officers, nobody actually reports to say, the stake relief society president. The ward relief society president reports to the bishop, who reports to the stake president, who reports on up the chain to exclusively men. The stake relief society president is there to do things such as plan the annual stake relief society luncheon, provide encouragement and moral support to ward relief society presidencies (the selection of which she had no participation in), visit ward conferences, and… I’m not sure exactly what else. With those luncheon planning responsibilities under her belt, she’s literally the most powerful woman in the entire stake. (To be clear, this is not to downplay the amount of work that a stake relief society president does – which is immense – but rather to point out her lack of authority to make exclusive final decisions for the women in her stake without priesthood oversight or veto power.)
Despite these major issues of underrepresentation and lack of authority, what’s really catching my attention in the midst of political unrest is the fact that these few women in leadership roles are not chosen by the women they will (kind of) be in a leadership position over. Rather, they are hand selected by the men that will be in charge of them.
What if the federal government worked this way? Would anyone feel truly represented? What if the president of the United States came to each state, spent some time getting to know the constituents, then picked on his own a couple senators and representatives to take back to Washington D.C. with him? Once back in the Capitol, I don’t think many people would feel satisfied by him saying, “Look, I brought some people from your state that I carefully chose to represent you, and that means I’m getting plenty of input from you guys!”.
I think people would argue back, “Mr. President, you picked a submissive, unopinionated senator who thinks you’re super awesome, will always agree with you, and supports your decisions without exception, so….how does that represent us? Aren’t they just there to come back and report to us what YOU decided to do?”
The president might reply (if he sounds at all like some church members I know), “Uggh, you people are never happy! You could live in North Korea or Afghanistan or somewhere that doesn’t even care what your state thinks! You should be grateful we work so hard to include you at all by flying your representatives all the way out here.”
When it’s organized like this, how is the Relief Society a great “women’s organization” if the men in charge pick all of our leaders for us, then decide unilaterally exactly how much they will/will not seek input from any of them before setting our policies, writing our lesson manuals, visiting teaching messages, and giving the keynote addresses at all of our conferences? How often are lessons on Sunday the teachings of past general relief society presidents (never), compared to past male general authorities (years and years of “Teachings of the Presidents of the Church” comes to mind)? How many conference talks do we study given by female leaders compared to male leaders? How many times are female leaders quoted in lesson manuals compared to prophets and apostles? How are we anything on Sundays but a group of women gathering together to learn about and discuss the great things the men in our church have previously said and done?
It sounds to me like a male run organization with female advisors, that happens to only allow female members.
Beyond not choosing our female leaders ourselves, we have zero input on who the male leaders will be that do the choosing. This is not the case for men, who despite not choosing their own elder’s quorum president, do not suffer equally. When a stake president is choosing a new bishop (for example), my understanding is that he will talk to the current bishop, the high councilman from that ward, maybe bishopric counselors, high priest group leader, or whatever priesthood leadership in the ward he chooses to seek input from. (I actually wrote a whole blog post about it once HERE.) So men ARE involved in the choosing of the next bishop, who then chooses their next elder’s quorum president. Additionally, if a man is uncomfortable with the leadership choices in his ward or stake, there’s at least a possibility that he might have a turn being in charge someday and could run things differently. That will never happen for a woman.
There’s the argument that all callings come from God, so it doesn’t matter who issues them. As a woman who’s never been (and never can be, without priesthood) in a position to extend callings to anyone in the church, I don’t know firsthand how callings are chosen. I did, however, take a popular institute class years ago from a well loved teacher. One day this instructor offered us a glimpse into his experience serving as a bishop. He was open and honest and joked, “You know, I’d say about 10 percent of the time callings were pure inspiration, and the other 90 percent was just pure desperation”. Everyone laughed as he explained having a backup list of callings to offer people if they turned him down for the first one. He taught me that a bishop is often overwhelmed with the constant work of staffing a ward with ever changing volunteers, and he’s usually satisfied to reach a point of basic function, not heavenly perfection.
Because of this, a bishop will generally call reliable ward members that he feels comfortable working with into leadership positions. A relief society president is not chosen by the voice of the women in her organization, she’s chosen by the man in charge of them.
How will women’s concerns ever be directly addressed under this male-only authority structure? And how long will we continue to call the Relief Society a female led organization when it’s clearly not? Can anyone imagine the riots that would occur in the U.S. Capitol if American citizens were treated the way Latter-day Saint women are, underrepresented and unable to select their own representatives?
We’ve got to do better than we are right now, both as Americans and as Latter-day Saints – and I personally think it’s high time to let some women start leading us there.
yes, pretty jarring when you put it that way. Some days I feel optimistic but I have to be honest – after years of waiting for bigger changes (some good changes, but still just so very tiny and incremental), this problem has just caused me to disengage significantly from the Church. I am still active and I participate, but I don’t believe the Church really values my skills or leadership. As such, I’ve taken them elsewhere and just don’t feel very invested in the Church as an institution.
I also think that women need to stop hoping for men to give them power and just take it where they can. Because only men could make these changes (since women are so incredibly disempowered in our Church), I am not holding my breath or asking permission. Carol Lynn Pearon’s excellent poem “Power” comes to mind.
Elisa, I love it when women seize their power and stop asking for permission. Women blessing or praying to HM are great ways to do that. It’s sad to me that there are so few ways within the institutional church setting for women to claim their power. Men have a chokehold on power within the institution, sadly.
agree. we haven’t had sacrament access issues during covid in our family (because I have a priesthood-holding husband), but 10/10 would have blessed the sacrament myself if I didn’t have and wanted access. Actually, I sort of did want to, but I thought that would spook my spouse a lot. It was absurd and infuriating to me that the people who were empowered to fix that problem instead just lamely suggested that women read the prayers to themselves. No thanks.
I hate asking for permission, too – but I am way too scared to go rogue and just do my own thing, ha ha. I was part of Ordain Women in 2013 and 2014, which was so radical at the time but more along my personal style – which was to go to the people in charge and ask permission. (“Please can you pray about women getting the priesthood, President Monson?”) I never dared to just go and act like I had it all along, but I did dare stand up and ask the leaders in charge to consider giving it to us. I’m still that way. Until they officially say women can do certain things, I’d never dare do them on my own. There’d me so much judgment and drama!
So for the sake of all the women like me who aren’t as brave as you guys, I hope things change! I’m so glad women like you are here who will just go for it. We need all of us pushing for change in different ways, together.
I think being part of Ordain Woman was totally brave. Because I think we feel like we need permission to ask permission ;-).
I’ve changed a ton since then but I was too chicken to publicly join at the time. Kudos to those who did.
Abby, I love your posts so much. Seeing this laid out like this is jarring and upsetting. That chart with the tiny handful of women at the bottom is just gross. It’s really sad to belong to a church that doesn’t want all my gifts, or the gifts of the many talented women around me.
The General Relief Society presidency being cut off from local and stake Relief Societies is particularly upsetting. They should be able to lead their organizations, as they did in the past.
What would the original Relief Society leaders even think if they saw how things were organized in 2021? Would they be okay with it? Would they be upset? How can things have gone BACKWARDS for female autonomy and leadership in the church, when it’s expanded everywhere else in the world so astronomically?
Another thing about that leadership picture that just makes me lose my mind is that the women leaders didn’t used to appear at all! It was around the time of OW putting public pressure on the Church that they decided to start showing general officers too, so it wouldn’t look like an all-male leadership. But the result is, as you say so well, gross. Like really? Putting a few women on at the bottom is supposed to make it all okay? Get serious!
Another thing that infuriates me: Men are the ones who decide when the women in leadership callings are done with the calling. So even if a hand-selected woman was willing to go out on a limb, the men can just remove her with no consequences.
The female general officer’s terms are so much shorter than the lifetime appointment that the men get. Every five years or so there’s a new presidency learning the job, so the women don’t have the benefit of continuity and extended experience that the men get.
A couple years ago, our stake president asked the bishopric if they had any good suggestions for a new Stake RS president. My comment to my bishopric husband: “Wouldn’t it be novel if they asked the women who should be in charge of the women’s organization? Or better yet, just let the women organize themselves.”
That is such a good point, and something that drives me just as nuts! I started a girl scout troop 6 1/2 years ago. I just met last night with the 6th graders, some of whom have been with me since I started the troop for them as baby kindergarteners. It has meant everything to have spent years in the “calling” (that I gave myself) as their leader. I am now feeling pretty confident about most things in my volunteer job with them, I feel good about training new leaders in my troop and continually expanding, and I feel so much love for the cool girls that I have known for years (and those who have just joined and I’ve known for months). I started from square one with just me and my daughter, and now we have over 30 girls and 10 leaders, and they range in age from 5 to 12. This project has been my baby. This troop has meant so much to me over the years. I’ve had other leaders join and be with me almost as long. I love it, and I love all of them.
If this had been a church calling, I would’ve been released years ago. My leaders that I’m working with the plan things would’ve been released from our troop with no warning many times over. I would’ve had to take whoever the bishop gave me in exchange, whether that person really wanted to do the job or not, and we would’ve lacked consistency and stability. Running a girl scout troop compared to running say, Young Women’s groups, is such a profound difference because we are actually in charge of our organization, not a group of men who have never even participated in the program themselves.
This! The unpredictable nature of callings!
Years ago I was called to be cub leader. I accepted, completely overwhelmed, as I knew nothing about scouting. However I threw myself into the calling and learned to work with the women who I had been assigned with, since I did not have any say in my two assistants. The boys loved the activities and came energetically each week. The parents enjoyed the variety of activity and the information I gave so they knew what we were up to. We did everything from learning about citizenship to first aid to hikes to geocaching to cooking. I got to spend time with my son who was in the program.
Then, two years later I was fired. Technically I was released but it was so abrupt and unexpected it was like hitting a wall and it left me breathless. I never found out why they fired me.
A few years later, ward shuffle, and the bishop is asking what callings I felt interest in as a “get to know the new people”. I enthusiastically told him about my experience in cubs and asked to be able to provide the same experience for my daughter who was now into Activity Girls. The room noticeably chilled as he shot down the idea that girls would have the same engaged activities. I did not get that calling. I wonder if that first meeting is partly why I have never had a calling since then that involves talking to adults. Nursery/pianist/organist/primary sub forever I guess now.
And this is why my youngest is in Girl Guides. Which she loves.
“The female general officer’s terms are so much shorter than the lifetime appointment that the men get. Every five years or so there’s a new presidency learning the job, so the women don’t have the benefit of continuity and extended experience that the men get.”
I feel this so much, Kaylee. Frequent reorganizations of the women’s auxiliaries don’t make for stable Young Women’s or Relief Society programs. I grew up in a ward where the Young Women’s presidency and the Beehive/Mia Maid/Laurel advisors were released and reorganized EVERY September. It was very frustrating for me and the other girls in the ward. We had to say goodbye to the leaders just as we were FINALLY getting to know one another, develop a relationship and bond with them, and have some continuity and stability in the program, only for us to start all over again with a new group of women that didn’t always get along with us. The bishoprics who did this were COMPLETELY out of touch with the girls regarding this. They never considered the effect switching out our leaders so frequently had on us and how unstable it made the ward Young Women’s program.
There were some girls in my ward who really needed the stability and consistency that comes with having the same leaders grow and bond with them in the program. They didn’t get that at home, and NOT having it in church on top of that resulted in them giving up on the gospel and the Young Women’s program. It still infuriates me to this day.
Of course, none of the other auxiliaries had their presidencies and advisors switched out so frequently.
There was a leaked priesthood training meeting a few years back, which mostly raised discussions online about the treatment of LGBTQ issues by leaders (all valid concerns).
The interesting things to me were all the subtle ways sexism was dripping from the meeting notes. One part was the leader encouraging wards to call Elder’s Quorum presidents for at LEAST five years, because they needed time to get to know families and understand their callings and gain experience. There was no similar call to have relief society presidencies last five years or longer. As it decried the problems of releasing men from priesthood leadership positions as frequently as 3 years apart, it didn’t even seem to occur to the speakers that would be an issue for the women’s organizations as well.
The ward where I moved nine years ago had all of the RS president’s pictures hanging in chronological order above the chalkboard. It took up the width of the room and I loved it. I loved seeing so many women; some of whom I hadn’t known existed. Looking at the photos during lessons enhanced my experience in RS and gave me a connection to a larger group of female leaders. Fast forward a few years and someone in the stake RS presidency had her child’s wedding reception in that RS room. The reception photos were taken in front of that chalkboard and I heard she was pissed that her child’s reception photos included the line up of RS presidents across the top of all the photos. Our ward RS president was instructed to take them all down and put them in a random scattered arrangement on a wall in the back of the room.
Yes, I totally agree with everything said here. We need more women leaders. It would benefit everyone; not just women. (How crazy is it that the Priesthood and FAMILY council has one woman?!) At the same time, why, why, why are women sometimes such obstacles to other women? Why did that sister use her power as a member of a Stake RS presidency to move pictures of our precious few women leaders to the back of the room?
As for me, I was sitting in sacrament meeting about two years ago when it hit that there were opportunities for me there. So I stopped expecting to get something at church that wasn’t available to me. Doesn’t me I don’t think it should be available and it doesn’t mean I’ve stopped speaking up about this in my ward; it just means I looked elsewhere for leadership experience. I ran for president of a professional organization and that has been amazing.
Yes this! I wish more women would do the same. I wish more women would decide they are tired of being second class citizens and doing all the unacknowledged labor of the Church and vote with their feet – not necessarily leaving Church but taking their talents somewhere they are appreciated. Maybe then the brethren would wake up and realize they have to make changes to recruit and retain the best and brightest women.
As it is, I don’t see that happening. They are still getting the support they need for women so why would they ever cede power?
It’s so empowering to do something outside of the church and realize what a stark difference it is to be treated as an expert or authority on something. I remember years ago when I was working in sales (before I had kids), and I was really, really good at it. Like, I was obliterating sales records everywhere. Supervisors would have new sales reps listen in on my approach as part of their training. I got spotlighted in corporate meetings. I was making so much money it was insane. People wanted to know what I had to say and treated me as the expert and it felt SO GOOD.
At the same time, I was in the young women’s presidency, and I went to some meeting in place of the president one day (I think it was ward council? I can’t remember!). Anyway, I was treated so differently there. Suddenly I was just the young women’s leader – who could technically have input if I raised my hand – but nobody was looking to me for answers or suggestions. I felt such a difference in how I was treated (like they expected me to be dumb and not know stuff) at church by my male leaders compared to how I was treated at work by my male bosses.
There was an experience around the same time when some men in the ward were talking about how much money they made in front of me, and looking for new jobs but not even bothering to interview unless they would offer them a minimum amount because they were so amazing and got paid soooo much, blah blah blah. The funny thing was, I WAS MAKING MORE MONEY THAN ANY OF THEM. Way, way more! I kept thinking, “I’m right here. I am very talented and smart. I am a superstar at work. But at church, I’m just seen as the girl in charge of refreshments.”
It was weird. I have been a stay at home mom for years, but I am so glad I had that experience as a young woman that let me know in my head forever that I am just as good and capable as those men in charge of everything at church are. As women we are so often encouraged to NOT enter the workplace and to get married and have babies young. I think it keeps us as a group from realizing how great it feels to be the one in charge and to be thoroughly, truly respected and listened to because we don’t experience in a career.
“As women we are so often encouraged to NOT enter the workplace and to get married and have babies young. I think it keeps us as a group from realizing how great it feels to be the one in charge and to be thoroughly, truly respected and listened to because we don’t experience in a career.”
–This. A much higher percentage of my friends who work outside the home have bigger issues with gender and the Church than those who don’t. There are all sorts of reasons for that and correlation isn’t causation and etc. etc., BUT I think a big part of it is working outside the home and seeing the difference between how women are treated outside of the Church vs. within is a real wakeup call. Even though there is plenty of sexism left in organizations, at least most have a GOAL to not be sexist whereas in our Church, sexism is held up as the divine ideal.
I also don’t think the difference used to be so jarring. Go back a few decades to the 1960s, and in the business place it was normal for the bosses to all be male and women to all be secretaries. If you were a working woman back then, church didn’t feel that different than the rest of your life.
But in 2021, the idea that to beyond a certain level of management at work only men would be allowed is absurd (and illegal). Yet at church, only men are allowed in the higher positions of authority and nobody bats an eye (except the growing number of us who start seeing the stark contrast of women’s voices and power in the regular world compared to church). It’s just not what the rest of society (American society, at least) does anymore, and if the church doesn’t start catching up soon it will be left behind as a relic of a past way of doing things.
Right Abby. I think what for me has really hammered my engagement with the Church is that the difference between where the world is on gender and diversity and where the Church is has widened significantly in my lifetime. It gets harder to excuse.
I love this post, Abby. The comparison is so telling. Church members are used to leadership being picked by higher leadership, and to women having callings that are limited in time and authority because it has been that way for so long, but I think your comparison really highlights what a bad practice this is.
I’ve been serving as the Relief Society president for two years now. When I received the call, I thought here was my chance to use my voice as an advocate for the women of my ward. I have a very progressive bishop and he has tried to put women in as many positions of leadership as he can. But even despite having a bishop who listens and respects women (which is sadly more rare than it should be), my greatest take away from my years of service is that women do not matter at all. We just don’t. We’re only as powerful as the men we are married to or the men who deign to listen to us. We have no recourse if men chose to release us from our callings and no method by which to choose our own leaders. We do not matter. And I’m tired of pretending that we do.
It’s so difficult. God bless you for serving and trying! It’s true that we’re usually only as powerful as the men we are married to – the main way to go places in the church is to be married to a man who gets called to a high position. No Latter-day Saint man anywhere is traveling to another continent to follow his wife after she’s called as a general officer in the church, or going to assist her as she presides over a foreign mission. It’s always the women tagging along with their husband after his talents are recognized and called upon.
There are those very few female leaders at the general level, but even for them they are turning to their husbands for a blessing and to bless the sacrament for them, never the other way around. Even the most powerful woman in the church has less authority than her husband to perform basic weekly ordinances or blessings.
I don’t see it changing any time soon – just little crumbs here and there. As the church bleeds membership over this and other equally glaring issues we might eventually see some change but by then it may be too late and the church will become more and more irrelevant. These glaring issues caused me to look more carefully at everything else as well and is taking me out.