A short break from my regular series.
Years ago I knew Kathy Pullins when she was in charge of the BYU Womens’ Conference. One thing that struck her is that President Hinckley told her that the Church needed leadership from the women in the Church and that it was pressing on him.
In general conference this weekend that message was repeated to an extent about how we needed women who were educated, who could administer and who were skilled.
Two questions:
First, how do we encourage women in those roles in spite of cultural forces to the contrary?
Second, how do we nourish them and raise them up?
It seems like I might be putting the order wrong, but it seems to me that unless we encourage women in these roles we aren’t going to get very far attempting to prepare them for those roles.
What do you think?
Wheat & Tares 
I figure there will be plenty of people talking about http://religiondispatches.org/why-i-boycotted-a-conference-at-brigham-young-university/
I think we stop telling them they are needed…just start valuing their leadership and giving them more. Let the women show what their ceiling is for contribution, not have priesthood holders have to figure it out and tell them what they can or cannot do. Just let them go and lead…and start to follow.
Too many bishops get caught up thinking they preside therefore everyone else is below them. That’s not the way the scriptures teach to shepherd.
We don’t have to figure it out and explain it or reconcile it to anything. Just start giving women leaders autonomy and say “May the Lord be with you.”
I find it ironic that, despite the assertion that the church needs women to step up and speak out, there are still only 2 women invited to speak in the general sessions of conference. The invitation to pray a couple years ago was long overdue. An article on KSL.com claims that women were the focus of the conference. There were two talks (given by men) about women in the dozens of talks given in the general sessions. Hardly a focus.
He says “We need women who are organized and women who can organize. We need women with executive ability who can plan and direct and administer; women who can teach, women who can speak out.” We’ve had women who can do these things all along, but they have not been given a place at the table (until just recently, and in small number) or authority to act.
Also, how are women supposed to know when their voices and ideas are welcomed? They are told to speak up, but not too much.
Heber13. My thoughts exactly.
The disconnect between the rhetoric and the culture is astounding.
If we as a church really want women to be leaders, then we need to completely restructure how we teach young women and how we treat adult women. Women are taught from day one to be passive and listen to the priesthood. We covenant to be followers.
In President Nelson’s talk, I think I counted 4 times where he mentioned that these women leaders that he wants be temple covenant keeping women. When I hear covenant keeping and women in the same sentence, the first thing that comes to mind is the hearken covenant. So his talk sounds to me like he’s asking for powerful female leaders who will obey their husbands. Am I the only one who sees this as a giant contradiction? I don’t know what he is really asking for. Does he want women who will articulately and passionately proclaim that hearkening to your husband is the best way? He wants women who are educated as long as that education doesn’t lead them to want to work outside the home or use their leadership skills in a governing church capacity? He wants women who can administer, but definitely not administer in the priesthood ordinances? He wants women with skills, but only so long as those skills are applicable to leading other women and children?
I’m not trying to be cynical but I honestly don’t understand what President Nelson wants. I think he has an entirely different definition of leader than I do. Is this one of those instances where we use a word that has a common definition and then we pretend like when we’re using it in reference to women it suddenly has a completely different definition? Like hearken and preside? Leader now means mother who will make sure none of her children leave the church?
EBK I think you are projecting but I might be wrong.
Honestly, that would make a great question to write into the Ensign. “Just what do you mean?”
Sorry to say it but the way the church gets more women doing more leading is to *give them true decision rights* or in current Mormon parlance, keys. We have created a large set of women who are good “influences” through the soft influence skillet because that is all they have up and down the hierarchy. Elder Nelson wants women with executive capabilities? Cool. Executives by definition are people with *decision rights*. I find that so many of the women who develop executive experience outside of the church (it’s the only place they can because none can do it inside the structure of the church as is) and who keenly know the difference between leading with decision rights and building influence with leaders with those rights feel completely condescending to and pedalstalized by all the talks in the church begging for their skills because they know they can’t use them and frankly are tired of being limited to influencer/managing up status. The sad thing is that Mormon women used to have that – an independent RS with their own budgets, own leaders who answered to noone, their own buildings and spaces. Give that back to.them and watch women with executive skills rise up. They are already there and so many more would blossom, like a rose in Deseret.
Until then we can work on “listening more” to our women, a laudable goal, but let’s not kid ourselves, our system doesn’t want them or allow them to be leaders with decision rights. They are smart enough to know the difference and to predict the next generation of potential women leaders will increasingly just leave.
Besides the obvious (give them priesthood and issue the same callings as men) here are some ideas:
Have callings extended by the same level of authority (I.e. the R.S. president called by the stake presidency instead of the bishop; stake relief society president called by a higher authority than stake president, etc.)
Equal treatment in disciplinary councils.
Have women sit on the disciplinary council.
Have women meet with the high council, or have a council of women (with similar responsibilities of course, not doily making)
It may be that this missed the point of the post, however, because these are organizational things and not things that individuals can do. If I were in a position to do so however, the first thing I would do would be invite the entire relief society presidency to every. single. bishopric meeting.
Good to make organization points as well as individual points. Both will be needed and thought about in order to have them happen.
If you’re going to talk the talk, you need to follow that up by walking the walk. The church just talks. It sounds good. If they truly meant it, there would be more autonomous leadership positions for women.
What I really believe is that this is a subversive message that women need to be strong in being ‘the neck that turns the head’ in the family. Since it is now well known that there are many more women than men in the church, it seems pretty clear to me that what the church needs is to have the women of the church telling the men to get their butts into pews and do the leadin!
I wonder if some of the commenters are looking belong the mark. I have served with and under two primary presidents the past five years that have provided excellent leadership for me and the boys I work with. I see stake primary presidents who provide leadership at round table. I have been to girls camp where the high concounciler has reminded the brethren that ” this is girls camp, the sisters are in charge.”
Is there room for improvement? Yes, but in my own life, l am inclined to stand back and let others lead, are there sisters with the same weakness? Working with the youth I see too many adults doing all the leadership, but sometimes is a real challenge to get the youth to lead. Is there a simalliar situation between some of the sisters and the brethren?
I am an active mormon women. I realized a few years ago that there was limited need for my services within the church. Instead busy work is created and women spend a lot of time wheel spinning. It occurred to me that there was real suffering in the world and that I was needed in my community. So I remained active as far as Sunday participation but I took my services to my community. Now when my ward attempts to try to rope me into callings or projects I make a determination as to whether there is an actual purpose to the work I am being asked to do. I usually say no and explain that I cannot take my time away from the actual Christian work I am doing in my community to pretend to be busy doing work of very little meaning. I make no apologies for this. I honestly wish women would send a message to the church by taking their services else where in mass. I am not advocating for inactivity but rather healthy boundaries and sensibilities. I volunteer doing crisis counseling and working with people experiencing homelessness. It would be wrong to stop doing that work to do some of the frivolous busy work in the church that has been made up for the purpose of distracting Mormon women from the harsh reality that there isn’t much for us to do.
governing myself, “I honestly wish women would send a message to the church by taking their services else where in mass.”
Amen to that!
I got so tired of micromanagement back when I was music chair. It was absolutely stifling. I had agreed to restrictions on music to select from, but it still took weeks to get musical items approved that were taken from the hymnbook! I even said at one point if you don’t trust me to do the job, then release me, do it yourself etc… But no. And still I and those who’d been willing to actually participate in musical items had to endure having to have a bishopric member (who knew nothing whatsoever about music) come and listen to a rehearsal (and organising a mutually convenient time for rehearsals was hard enough) before the piece could be signed off for sacrament meeting. Just plain insulting to both the participants and myself. That has been the most frustrating and demoralising experience trying to fulfil a calling in recent times. At least now as primary pianist I know I’m not in a position to make too many decisions, and I’m several layers removed from being micromanaged by ecclesiastical authority. I am getting much more involved in music at my kids school now.
Stephen,
I’m not sure where you think I’m projecting. I can’t see in my comment anything that is not an accepted teaching of the church. I’m not pretending the Church has teachings that it doesn’t.
governingmyself,
I love your idea. As someone who has had callings such as “member of the 12 person bulletin board committee” and “attend the teacher improvement Sunday School course so the teacher has someone to teach,” I think I’m going to take your advice and not accept callings that are busy work callings.
The best local leadership basically delegate decision rights to women within their spheres. This is actually pretty rare to see done in wards. You know it is truly happening when a bishop allows a primary president or RSP to do something he and the bishopric *disagree with* by saying “hey its your call”. Maybe that is what Sparks had in her area with the primary presidency – a ward/stake where the primary leadership was given wide latitude and felt that they could make decisions even when a bishop counseled against it. That is what true decision rights mean. And developing true leadership skills requires being in a position where you have to make hard calls and accept responsibility for those hard calls so you can learn from them. In almost every ward leadership I have been involved in women were not systematically given that full set of responsibilities and powers. And shocker, when you turn those over to women who have been systematically excluded from that for their whole life they find it uncomfortable and stressful at first (or many do), especially if they don’t have experience outside the church with such roles. Many do these days but so many don’t. They didn’t stay in the workforce long enough to get positions of management and leadership. They haven’t owned P&Ls etc. where so many of our bishops and stake presidents have both in their day jobs and then through years and years of church service calibrated toward shaping them into ecclesiastical leaders.
I am thinking of a woman that I mentor that is awesome. She will be entering a top B-school PhD program here soon – while having three kids. She is disciplined, smart, decisive and has all the makings of a great leader. She was primary president of her ward with a huge primary and incredibly transient population. Staffing the primary reliably was a huge operational problem. She found an awesome creative solution, took months to pilot it, developing buy in from the branch president and other leaders. She poured her incredible energies into this. It was presented in passing to the stake president as a huge win for the whole ward. Based on a two sentence supportive description by the branch president and without asking a single question he dismantled the whole thing and walked out the door. Decision rights. He had them. She didn’t. She told the branch president two weeks later she would be quitting her position after he had a sufficient amount of time to find her replacement (because, well she is made of true leadership material). This has been her experience her entire church career in leadership callings. This was just the last straw. Now ask yourself – of you are her and you have the choice between putting effort into putting your efforts into kicking butt at a top b-school in a place with women leaders, where she is respected and where she has a reasonable chance of having real control and decision rights or investing in the church leadership and hierarchy available to her what would a rational person do? In good conscience, how could anyone tell her that she is better off spending her time getting kicked in the teeth for being innovative, finding solutions and *leading* within the church where she will NEVER be in a position where she will have a significant scope of decision rights that aren’t at the whim of someone else than putting them into a world that is far more likely value her and treat her with the respect she earns. Yep. The church is lucky she hasn’t walked out the door. Do we really believe it is her responsibility to suffer for Christ in this system when she can go and *do good* in so many other ways.
I could tell 50 stories like this. We can say it is a just a matter of “training” the leaders better. Its not. It could help some but this is structural and the women know it. They feel it. I am so happy that so many women felt optimism in Nelson’s talk that they have faith that it is a signal that things may change. But it would require an entire transformation starting at the center of the organization that goes far beyond finally putting one woman leader on each governing church committee with no bureaucratic resources in 5 year temporary callings. That is a joke. It is the tiniest of tiny steps – symbolic at best. Could huge transformation be done without ordination. Yes. But it would have to be huge. I still think ordination is the actual right thing to do because if there is a parent Godhead of equals which is the only way I will believe in Mormonism it is the only logical set up. We used to have something so much better. A truly independent RS with its own leaders called by women only. Give them that back and then we can talk.
Governingmyself and Hedgehog, I echo feelings of frustration with micromanagement and restrictions that exist in relation to the service of women in the church. After coming home from a workplace where my opinion and decision making abilities are valued and vital, it is embarrassing how these skills are unappreciated, undervalued and unused at church. At work I happen to be a women and have children, at church it sometimes feels it is all I am.
Maybe this isn’t a male-female problem. How many bishops give free reign to their Young Men presidents or elders quorum presidents? Honestly, today a Relief Society President or Young Women president get far more deference from a bishop than a male counterpart on the ward council, and that solely because they are female and bishops have been instructed to listen to the sisters. The brothers on the ward council get no such respect. Bishops who are micro-managers are equal opportunity micro-managers. That’s fair, isn’t it?
ji, EQP and HPGL are stake callings and as such not subject to the micromanagement of a Bishop. A Bishop has to work harder to get them on side, and they can ‘protect’ their quorum members from unreasonable demands. My husband certainly did so back when he served as EQP. All of the callings held by the women operating in a ward are subject to the Bishop, including the RSP, and as such vulnerable to threats when they disagree. Furthermore, at least here, because those serving as YMP and SSP have often previously served as Bishop or on the HC or even as a member of the Stake Presidency, they are granted much more freedom. So no, it isn’t fair.
Just got back from the temple, and observed the following change. At the end of an endowment session it used to be one of the women temple workers would indicate to the waiting women when to approach the veil, and a male temple worker would do the same for the men. This was no longer the case. No, the woman temple worker had to keep catching the eye of the male temple worker to indicate that there were spaces available so that he would then indicate to the women when to approach the veil, in addition to indicating to the men. It was painful to watch. Why the change? Heaven forfend that a woman might just invite other women to approach the veil! What was that all about? Has anyone noticed this change elsewhere?
To be fair, there are situations even within the church, where women have keys, and men report to women. I’ve known several regional Public Affairs directors who were women, but had men on their committee. And they train stake presidents.
In family history, music and Primary there are also situations where men report to women.
And of course with senior couples if they are called on a medical or auditing mission on the basis of her qualifications, then he may be working for her as the administrative person.
And I’ve never seen men resent reporting to women. So I suspect that a lot of the issues are based on calling rather than gender per se.
In the handbook, there is a chart about who can call who. It is kind of interesting. A YW president is responsible for choosing her own counselors but a YM president is not because of the reasons stated earlier.