ClobberBlog | Mormonism, Evangelical Christianity

[Hanks, Maxine, ed. Women and Authority: Re-emerging Mormon Feminism. Salt Lake City, Ut.: Signature Books, 1992.]

Yup, late again, but here’s Chapter 5, “An Expanded Definition of Priesthood?: Some Present and Future Consequences” by Meg Wheatley.

For starters, the tone of this chapter is markedly more gentle than that of some of the previous chapters. Not that Wheatley’s insights don’t still cut into some lazy LDS aphorisms on gender (“[B]usyness is not the issue. What is key is the value publicly assigned to the task, the status and recognition it commands,” p. 156), but the chapter contains less rhetoric depicting male leaders as the bad guys and her ultimate call to action is less dramatic. If you’re a Latter-day Saint who does not share all of the issues with the system expressed by Mormon feminists, and you’ve been reading these updates and thinking, “Man, I really don’t want to wade through all this feminist anger,” this chapter is probably a good place to start.

Wheatley argues many of the same things that I’ve often argued in my comments here and at fMh: a church structure that bars women from managerial positions communicates a subtle message about their inferiority. She writes:

She then goes on to compare some of the ways in which businesses and professions were effected when women began to enter the field. Particularly poignant are her insights on aspiration, and how lower-level workers will look to advance if the organization fosters and encourages such an attitude. “We saw the reverse of this phenomenon when affirmative action laws first came into being. Many managers in search of women to promote into managerial ranks focused on talented secretaries. To their surprise these women frequently met their offers of training and promotion with rebuffs” (157). So all of those women who insist that they would not want the priesthood even if they can have it? Maybe they would think differently if the LDS system weren’t regularly discouraging them from wanting it.

Wheatley goes on to point out that sometimes the entry of women into certain professions had the effect of devaluing the profession altogether. One example for this is bank tellering, a job that was male-dominated until the 1950s and once considered an entry point to higher positions in the bank. Now the field is 90% occupied by women and considered a dead-end job. For that reason, she says, admitting women to the priesthood may not be the fastest way to fix the solution. If women were admitted to the priesthood, lower ranks of the priesthood may simply become devalued altogether while the real leadership decisions continue to come through male-dominated ranks.

I find myself in something of a disagreement with Wheatley there. It seems like a classic case of assuming correlation equals causation without really tying together the two. Even if these professions are falling in value as women enter them, is continuing to bar women from these professions (and by extension, priesthood) really the answer? Should there be no women bank tellers right now?

That said, I completely agree with her overall point that separating the marriage of priesthood and bureaucracy so that women have the opportunity to participate in the latter without necessarily being part of the former is a good step towards remedying the problem. The final two pages of her essay contain a very practical list for ways in which the church can improve the status of women without formally admitting them to the priesthood. I highly recommend going over to the online copy of W&A and reading the end of it.

Next week (today or tomorrow?) will be Chapter 6, “Mormon Women as ‘Natural’ Seers: An Enduring Legacy” by Ian G. Barber.