Dr. Margaret Toscano is a Department Chair at the University of Utah, but she got 2 degrees from BYU and taught there as well. In our next conversation, we’ll learn more about her time at BYU, and see her perspective on male privilege for scholars at the university.
Margaret: I started out from BYU, but I’ve always loved literature. That was sort of my first love, being an English major. Then when I was at BYU, I got interested in language, studying Latin and Greek, because I became very interested in Biblical studies and I wanted to be able to read the Bible in the original languages. So I first took Latin and I like to tell my Latin students, this little story. I was an English major and a History minor. I had a boyfriend who I met in a history class, and he persuaded me to take Latin, and I did. Well, that boyfriend is long since gone, but Latin lasts forever. I still teach Latin. I love teaching. I teach both Latin and Ancient Greek and all kinds of courses dealing with religious topics and literary and cultural topics. I teach a big Introductory to Classical Mythology. Sometimes I’ll have 250 students.
…
I did my masters at BYU in Classical Languages. I started out with literature and then I got really interested in the ancient world in doing Biblical Studies. I did some work with Hebrew, too. I finished my master’s there. Then I got married. In that time period, I became really interested in Mormon theology and history. So it was while I was at BYU in the early 70s, that I began to meet people who were really digging up documents.
…
I have to say that, for me, the two things that really made me feel like I was a feminist during that period was I began to see these gaps between men’s–what would I say? Not just, in large, about the sort of gender gaps between how men were privileged over womenut , bwithin the context of the church. I began to ask questions about gender equality. For me, it really came very much, at that time, from a place of believing, where I felt like, “Here I am, a Mormon woman. I believe in God, I believe in the idea of the restoration. But I feel like that there are these inequities that strike me, not just wrong, but somehow go against my own feelings of God’s love and what I want as somebody who is committed to spirituality, and to the sort of basic ideals of the gospel.” So, maybe I could just give a couple of examples. So, for me, it didn’t start out with the idea of kind of focusing on priesthood or even the Heavenly Mother, which are two things I’ve written about. I think for me, it started out from the idea of–and maybe this was in a sense connected with priesthood, but I think it was at BYU, that I saw so much male privilege, that as a woman, I felt like I wasn’t taken as seriously as my male counterparts. I was working on my Masters in Classical Languages. I was obviously smart and did a good job. But, it was the idea that my professors were encouraging all of my male colleagues to go off and get PhDs, so they can come back and be these great scholars. But I was seen as somebody where, “Oh, yeah, you’re going to get married, you’re going to have children. We’re not going to take you seriously as a scholar.” So I think that was the first area where I felt it, was the difference in expectations or the way in which I was valued. I began to see that I didn’t feel like I was valued as much as men at BYU, that I was not encouraged to write or to be a scholar or to do anything… “Oh, yeah, we are happy to have you as a teacher, you’re a great teacher, but you’re going to fill this little spot in teaching until one of our male stars comes back from a big PhD program, and then, oh, yeah, then they’ll take your role, and, of course, you’ll be having kids, so you won’t care.”
Following her time as a student and teacher at BYU, Dr. Margaret Toscano had a bit of a feminist awakening. What was it about BYU that led her to seek more about female spirituality?
Margaret: I’m working like crazy to finish this master’s thesis. Then right about the same time that I finished the master’s thesis is when I found the Ehat book with the Joseph Smith material and I’ll come back to that. I want to finish the professional trajectory, which really connects to this tension I felt between, what is it to be a good Mormon woman, and do my desires and ambitions conflict with that? What does God want of me? How does God view women in this bigger scheme of things? So really, that question is just kind of building up in me over the years, starting in the 70s, and feeling marginalized and ignored and invisible at BYU no matter what I did, and then getting married, and I’m having my kids, and then I’m starting to get interested in Mormon History and also in biblical studies and thinking about women within the biblical narratives. Then I do my thesis, and then I start really looking at these documents about the church. [The year] 1984 was when I did my first public speech on women and priesthood. I’ll come back to that. So that’s happening, but to go to my professional life, I’m really involved in Mormon studies and Mormon things from the 70s, the 80s, the 90s. I started my PhD in 1988, after I’d already published some things in Mormon Studies, because I realize and here it goes back to these tensions, that I really love teaching on the university level. I had been an adjunct teacher, already. So in 1988 I’d already been an adjunct teacher for like 10 years, with my master’s degree and I’m thinking I can never move beyond the adjunct position, if I don’t have a PhD.
…
I wanted to do that Ph.D., but it took me a lot of years, it actually took me 12 years to finish my Ph.D., for two reasons, well, three reasons. I was raising my family at the same time. Here again, I’ll sound really defensive. I actually never worked full time until my youngest was 12. Why do I feel like I have to say that? I’m a dedicated mother, right? But again, that’s what you’re put into–this kind of defensiveness. I’m taking my kids to school, going to a class, going home and pick them up, make them dinner, 11 to 2, work on my papers for my classes, trying to do this Ph.D. So it took me 12 years [because I was] raising my family. I was also still involved in Mormon Studies and my Ph.D. here at the University of Utah.
I know some people have mentioned that BYU culture can be so oppressive that some people will naturally rebel against it and become feminists. Do you agree? Or is it just a vocal minority that find the culture oppressive? Is BYU more supportive of male scholars than female scholars?
Wheat & Tares 
I think BYU has gotten better over time as regards taking women seriously as students and scholars, but it has absolutely been built on some very harmful ideas about women, and those ideas come straight from the top (and still exist there). For those people who went through WW2 and then started raising families in the 50s and 60s, men went to college to earn more, but women went to college to get a husband with more earning potential. The reason for this is because after the war, the country discriminated openly against women to get them to leave the workplace for the returning vets and to provide the “care” these young men needed in many cases, as well as repopulating the country after the losses in the war. While the economy fell by 4% after the war, women’s wages dropped by 26%, and it was a totally legal norm to openly discriminate against women and to put them in subordinate roles to men. As a result, many women found that they couldn’t earn a living even if they wanted to. The deck was too stacked against them. The problem is that when Benson doubled down on this idea that only women have to be career-denying full time parents, many Church members took that as a prophetic mandate. Women thought that to be “righteous” they couldn’t use their education for anything other than self-edification and finding a husband, and too many men also thought this.
This is the problem of a gerontocracy. The past is a foreign country, but our leaders still live there.
“This is the problem of a gerontocracy. The past is a foreign country, but our leaders still live there.”
And yet the Lord continues to call older men to lead His church. Perhaps that foreign country is better than the one we currently inhabit?
Is the problem just the gerontocracy? I don’t see Bednar as any more enlightened in the upper echelons, nor are any of the younger GAs that I know of. The church does a very effective job of indoctrinating chosen leaders so even younger white men act like much older white men.
I question whether the Lord calls Old men. We have the traditions of our fathers. Hugh B.Brown advocated for a retirement age for apostles, but his proposal was not accepted for apostles, only Seventies. Other religions have a retirement age. Perhaps this tradition is not the Lord’s doing, but man’s.
If the Lord was displeased with the current system, He could inspire change. Unless you suggest Church leadership has been acting in opposition to the will of God for generations?
Bryan: was Church leadership acting in opposition to God’s will when the Priesthood ban was in place? Or is God a racist?
BYU has improved but still has a long way to go. Here are a few examples:
My husband and I did on-campus internships though the business school in 2014. When trying to see what internships would be most applicable to my field, the professor in charge asked me if I “intended to work.” He didn’t ask my husband that.
I was in a GE career exploration class. The professor jokingly brought up an example of a female student in his other class who wanted to have a career and not have kids. Apparently the rest of the class did not react well to that and verbally attacked her.
In my Book of Mormon class, the professor told the women in the class to be patient with their future husbands who wouldn’t be able to provide them with the lifestyle they had with their parents right away. It would take time for their husband to build up weath.
While having lunch, I heard two male students talking about a girl one of them was dating. One of the guys asked what her major was. The other one said it was English. Then they both kind of paused and chuckled. The first boy then said that was a good major for a stay-at-home mom.
We have a massive cultural problem. Girls go to school without serious career considerations in mind. They don’t take themselves seriously sometimes which makes it easier for the boys to not take them seriously. Boys go to school looking for women who don’t have career aspirations and will be stay-at-home moms. Boys don’t value girls beyond procreation and child rearing. When someone is limited to a function, they are objectified. Girls can also objectify boys in thinking of them only as a paycheck and future provider. The strict separation of male and female spheres does neither gender any favors. It limits understanding and empathy between men and women. This combined with a male-dominated world and church places women in an “other” status, where many Mormon men truly don’t view women as the same type of beings that they are.
On Sunday at church in priesthood, they played a 20 year old recording among other things telling us not to abuse our wives. It was obvious to me that as long as women are not equal (priesthood) they will not be treated as equal.
There are now a group of young female leaders round the world, NZ, Scotland, Finland. Imagine what would happen to young american womens view of the world if a young woman became president, and joined the attitude of the leaders above, who have for example a wellbeing budget, to determine not only how legislation will affect the budget, but the wellbeing of the most needy.
Perhaps the April conference?
Angela: The priesthood ban was the will of God until He declared otherwise. I don’t fully understand its purpose, but far be it from me to assign unflattering motives to the Divine.
Bryan, where is the revelation saying the ban was the will of God? (Hint: there isn’t one.)
Go read the Gospel Topics essay that says “racial distinctions and prejudice were not just common but customary among white Americans. Those realities, though unfamiliar and disturbing today, influenced all aspects of people’s lives, including their religion.”
…
“During the first two decades of the Church’s existence, a few black men were ordained to the priesthood. One of these men, Elijah Abel, also participated in temple ceremonies in Kirtland, Ohio, and was later baptized as proxy for deceased relatives in Nauvoo, Illinois. There is no reliable evidence that any black men were denied the priesthood during Joseph Smith’s lifetime. In a private Church council three years after Joseph Smith’s death, Brigham Young praised Q. Walker Lewis, a black man who had been ordained to the priesthood, saying, “We have one of the best Elders, an African.”4”
…
“The justifications for this restriction echoed the widespread ideas about racial inferiority that had been used to argue for the legalization of black “servitude” in the Territory of Utah.10 According to one view, which had been promulgated in the United States from at least the 1730s, blacks descended from the same lineage as the biblical Cain, who slew his brother Abel.11 Those who accepted this view believed that God’s “curse” on Cain was the mark of a dark skin. Black servitude was sometimes viewed as a second curse placed upon Noah’s grandson Canaan as a result of Ham’s indiscretion toward his father.12”
…
“Today, the Church disavows the theories advanced in the past that black skin is a sign of divine disfavor or curse, or that it reflects unrighteous actions in a premortal life; that mixed-race marriages are a sin; or that blacks or people of any other race or ethnicity are inferior”
See https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/study/manual/gospel-topics-essays/race-and-the-priesthood?lang=eng
If you state again that the race ban was God’s will, I will delete the comment as it is a racist comment and I will not tolerate racism by anyone here. This is your fair warning. I have zero tolerance for blaspheming God’s name to promote a racist theories that the church has clearly disavowed. It’s long past time to update your knowledge on that topic. Don’t test me.
Rick B: I am familiar with the Race & the Priesthood essay. Seems silly to delete my comment when it was directly requested by one of this blog’s co-founders, but feel free to do so. I am much more interested in the question of whether bloggers know how to run the Church better than those called by God to do so.
Bryan, your hubris and judgment are noted. I don’t think you are a good fit for this blog, and while you may think your comment was “requested,” your poor explanation could have been handled another way without throwing God under the bus. But yes, I do think Angela has a better idea on how to run the church than you do. The bloggers here aren’t into worshiping the brethren as idols here as you appear to advocate. They may be called of God, but that doesn’t mean every decision they make is God-inspired.
While this is off topic, I was quite astonished at the candor of church employees in Episode 5 of Saints Vol 2, openly admitting mistakes by church leaders with regards to the ban on blacks. It’s really quite remarkable: https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/inspiration/latter-day-saints-channel/listen/series/saints/5-bowed-down-to-the-grave?lang=eng
But let’s get back to the topic of Dr. Toscano’s experiences at BYU.
Bryan, when the prophet speaks the thinking is done. This seems to be your mantra. That being the case, what are you doing on heathenish blogs? Shouldn’t you be reading your scriptures or a general conference talk?
Thanks for interviewing Dr. Toscano. I was familiar with her Mormon Stories interview she did many years ago. It’s fascinating to hear her again after so many years.
I know some people have mentioned that BYU culture can be so oppressive that some people will naturally rebel against it and become feminists. Do you agree?
Having not attended BYU, I only know of its “oppression” second and third hand. I would imagine that BYU culture encourages patriarchy, and produces a bit of feminism in a few people as a byproduct. After all, feminism, the radical idea that women are equal to men, is only necessary as a counter-movement if there is a belief or structure, explicit or implicit, that says otherwise.
I got two degrees from BYU, including a nontraditional graduate degree (the program was 80% male when I got my degree). . Did I find sexism in situations? Sure. But I don’t think “feminism” is the natural product for every woman. If anything, I feel like I left more grounded in my desires and family priorities than ever. I embraced my education and career wholeheartedly. I didn’t meet my until after starting my career. We started our family right away. I found ways to keep my skills active, but because my husband was a good provider, I had a CHOICE. I don’t like how the world is moving more toward an “Equality” that ignores the value of family life for both men and women. And how is this feminist: “I’m going to measure myself based on what a man does, and try to reach where men have reached, and define equality based on men’s lives and choices.” Elder Cook years ago asked us to be active in asking for more policy that is FAMILY-friendly. I crave a world that cares more about family and less about turning women into their male professional counterparts, ignoring the central nature of the family in society and in God’s plan. Women have been making a huge difference in their world, too, in ways that can’t be measured by GDP or salary or position level. It’s insulting to me as a woman to be reduced to such limited measures. The strongest women I know have impacts in so many ways — at home, in the community, in their chosen line of work if they so choose, and in service and nonprofit and other realms. Why do we keep comparing ourselves to men and defining ourselves by their models? I think I’m a different kind of feminist, because typical feminists do not represent most of how I feel as an educated, deliberate woman.
I have a friend who got her MA at BYU with Valerie Hudson in International Studies, went on to get her PHD in England in Womens’ Studies, still very active in the Church. She loved BYU. I think the difference for her though as opposed to Dr. Toscano, is she wasn’t excommunicated
“This is the problem of a gerontocracy. The past is a foreign country, but our leaders still live there.”
This is a HUGE problem. …in every aspect of the church’s operations and future. And the idea that those who are in the line of succession will have a revelation disqualifying themselves is laughable.
Treating male as the standard is a huge problem. The categories of earning money and unpaid childrearing should be disassociated from gender. Both sexes should have the choice to work outside the home or to work inside the home.
While I liked many things about BYU, its culture does nothing to foster choice for both men and women. Mormon men must go to school with the intention of having successful careers to provide for their families. Mormon women must go to school with a career as a plan b or just in case and must only choose work flexible enough to be the primary caregiver. Neither of these options is fair to men or women. Family and relationships should be prioritized over paid labor for everyone. But we won’t get there if most of the people making family policies are men. We also won’t get there if we don’t normalize stay-at-home parenting as a valid option for men.
Unfortunately, BYU’s overall culture doesn’t contribute to these goals and remains firmly rooted in gender roles that disadvantage men and women. The female disadvantage is more easily measured as it is quantifiable and deals with missed opportunities for financial gain. The male disadvantage isn’t talked about nearly enough. Our senior church leaders and their wives many times typify and are used as examples to glorify the unhealthy male and female dynamic in our world. What I mean by this is how many senior male church leaders seem to be workaholics while their wives care for children and home. These men greatly missed out on family time between their careers and church callings, and their wives missed out on unique growth or development that can be gained through the workplace.
If there is to be a standard, it should be family first. Of course family doesn’t come with the prestige or wealth that the workplace brings and is still seen as the domain of women, which degrades its value. Let’s just see men and women first as human beings. And let’s recognize that the default human is not male. There are many standards and defaults that should be equally valued.
Mary’s comment is spot on. I was at BYU in the late 80s/early 90s and I saw how much most of the students bought into what she says in her second paragraph. I was there when BYU had hired Cecilia Konchar Farr to teach feminism and then fired her for teaching feminism. I was also taught by Gail Turley Houston, who was eventually fired as well, notably for her public comments about Heavenly Mother.
A big reason for the things Mary brings up is the fact that the 19th century gender dynamic that the church still champions is seen by Mormons as doctrine/theology rather than an outmoded and harmful social practice. That’s what I saw at BYU. The fact that a number of young women I knew were in tears by the end of freshman year that they didn’t yet have a fiancé indicates just how damaging outmoded and harmful the church’s ideas about gender can be.
@brother Sky-I think we judge BYU by our own experiences from years ago (late 80’s early 90’s) but not what is currently going on, which is what I think the question is directed at. The Church hired Lisa Grow Sun who is a member and who graduated from Harvard Law, first in her class, she still teaches at the BYU Law School,She’s married and has kids. Even if she wasn’t, its her business. BYU has lots of female Profs.and however they work out their family life is their thing
https://law.byu.edu/faculty/lisa-grow-sun/
I never attended BYU so I don’t really know the culture there (though I have an idea that it is similar to church culture.) The 1980s is very significant to this discussion as that is when Margaret taught at BYU. I am also curious how current culture may or may not have changed at BYU.
I have heard the BYU-Idaho is even MORE conservative than BYU-Provo, so that is an interesting dynamic.
With regards to diversity in general, it was pretty disheartening to me to hear that the Nixon Administration forced BYU to hire 3 black faculty in the 1970s. Fast forward to 2019, and Matt Harris tells me that BYU has…..wait for it….3 black faculty! That is 50 years later! My how things have NOT changed with regards to race. I hope it has changed with regards to gender, but that isn’t a good omen.
BYU still lacks a childcare center for student parents. Unlike nearly every other similarly sized university.
I graduated with my master’s from BYU in 2016. It has slowly been improving in hiring a few women, but it is by no means a wide-sweeping trend. BYU used to have the same policy for female faculty that the church did for CES teachers: if you had a child under 18 at home and were a woman, you couldn’t work at BYU. Obviously this changed for the university a while ago, but culturally it persists.
I think the only full professors I had, while an undergrad and grad student, that were female weren’t married. There were 2 exceptions to that. The ones that were married and had kids generally didn’t have children at home anymore and some of them had master’s degrees rather than PhDs. So if you are a single Mormon woman, sure go to grad school and maybe become a professor. If you are married and plan on having kids, good luck finding peers in your same situation at the university.
They have a female dean for the business school now, and there are other very slow improvements. But I don’t know how many departments are actively trying to recruit female professors. When I was there, I heard a conversation between two female professors in a male-dominated field. They were disturbed by how hiring more women didn’t seem like a priority. They were also disturbed how a qualified female professor in their area was being discouraged from applying for tenure, which the department wanted to give to a male professor.
Nevertheless, I do hope parents with diverse and progressive perspectives continue to send their children there. We need change.
BYU being forced to hire black faculty, isn’t exactly true. Gucharan Sing Gill was a BYU Math prof from 1960 to 1999 and he isn’t white and he came long before Nixon. He was a Mission President in India even in the mid 1990s. Should BYU or any other University hire somebody based solely on the color of their skin? That’s crazy-it’s like saying we want Afro-Americans to be educated but what gets them hired isn’t their education. In the Two, non Mormon Universities I graduated from in one faculty they have one African male as a Prof and he teaches Peace and Conflict Studies and is the head of the Graduate Program and their is one Asian woman who teaches Asian History courses. There are about 30 profs, all white male and female. In the other University there about the same amount of profs, no African among them. So, BYU having 3 black profs is quite good i’d say!
whizzbang: It’s a fair point about my long ago experiences at BYU, but I visit regularly and it seems while there are some small improvements, there is still a long way to go. The last numbers I saw were that women comprised only 21 percent of full-time instructors at BYU-Provo. Those numbers dip even further at BYU-Idaho, where the number is somewhere around 12 percent. There have also been interviews with female faculty at BYU and one issue, apparently, is that full time female faculty members feel pressure to not outshine their male colleagues. So the hiring of a female law professor from Harvard is merely a drop in the bucket. You are correct, though, that her family is her business, not ours, and certainly not the institution’s.
@brother Sky, I think Susan Easton Black now Durrant or something gave an interview and she shares snippets of her time at BYU but one thing she shares is she won Prof of the year https://www.fromthedesk.org/10-questions-with-susan-easton-black/
I think that says something about how BYU values women profs. If they didn’t there wouldn’t be any left, they would all leave. I knew a lady once who is a member of the Church , Yale Law School graduate, she worked in the Legal field and she quit because she said it was so male dominated, that may be true for her but other women love it and do really well at it, so many factors and contexts
I graduated from BYU-Idaho in 2010…. and I got married in 2009. The first week back from the break(during which I got married) I was called into the office of my professor who wanted to know my plans…. and proceeded to tell me that I needed to now focus on having kids….. The anger from that day still rages on in me. Going to school to “earn your Mrs.” is still very much alive at BYU Idaho…. and yes, I also did acutely feel the culture of picking a degree based on flexibility and ease of childrearing. As a millennial who grew up in the Morridor, I am angry at the culture that didn’t encourage me to push myself or to choose a challenging, fulfilling career.
@Millenialgal-What is stopping you from getting a MA and Doctorate like Dr. Toscano?
Whizzbang- She is amazing…. but I am not interested at the moment in taking twelve years to accomplish something… but fair point.
@whizzbang maybe millennial gal does have a doctorate now, we don’t know (but why assume she doesn’t?). She told us about what stopped her from getting one then, the culture of BYU and specifically the comments of her professor. I feel the same way, I too was raised to believe that child rearing was the purest pursuit in life and that my BYU degree was only a fall back. Although I have learned that this is not the correct path for me, it doesn’t change
1. BYU culture (2001-2005) insists that motherhood is the best option for happiness and fulfillment
2. It can be difficult to change your whole life view and plans mid life so glib comments about just “getting one now” don’t help.
Emily and Millennialgal, please don’t waste your time arguing with Whizzbang. He has his mind made up and won’t be convinced, even in the face of overwhelming evidence. I tangled with him on an earlier post on race at BYU and he really is a waste of time. No amount of proof means anything to him. He will start calling you a corporate shill for disagreeing. I may start deleting his comments as I am tired of his schtick.
I’m a professor at BYU. My department actively seeks to hire female faculty, but b/c they need to be LDS there just isn’t a big enough pool to draw from. Lack of childcare is a huge issue in recruiting qualified female faculty. Why would they want to work here when other universities have much more “family-friendly” options? My own colleagues are awesome, but the stories my students tell me about interactions with some faculty and students are unbelievably awful. I tell all my students that they are entitled to their *own* revelation and inspiration. No one is entitled to tell them that their own personal revelation is incorrect. Male faculty and student ward bishops are at the top of the list of telling these young women that their goals are not “in harmony” with motherhood (their divine and only calling). And the male students? Oh the stories I could tell you about how the church male-female hierarchy influences their opinions and beliefs about women. And influences how they treat/talk to the female students on campus.
I attended BYU in the early 90s and saw a lot of this pressure BUT I think I was largely able to avoid it for two reasons. The first, I was in the honors dorm freshman year with a slew of women who were pushing the envelope in a broad range of challenging fields. We had one girl from our floor get married right after freshman year and most of us (especially those of us from “back East”) were quizically wondering “why so early.” The second was because I was in a STEM field that was largely dominated by men but not so chauvanist like the computer science department. The department I was in only had one female (not even professor, but instructor) who to this day remains a friend and who mentored me. My name professors by and large were stellar in their support of my educational and professional pursuits (they heavily recruited companies to come interview us, for example) and I ended up working in the department for most of my college career which gave me a closer view of them and their personal lives as well. Most of my professors had stay at home wives with various side interests/hobbies but I saw their support of me as an attempt to change the narrative and the future a bit, if you will. .I feel extremely lucky to have had that experience. I don’t know if I would have the overall positive view of BYU today without that small, very supportive department. I have worked nearly full-time since then and I have children….a super supportive husband has been key to that.
*male not name professors