According to The New York Times, there are currently 23,000 women working as missionaries for the Church of Latter-day Saints. More Mormon women are acting as their family’s breadwinner, pursuing an education, having fewer children, marrying at older ages and sometimes not even marrying at all. The church itself has also started inviting women to participate in local councils and offering leadership positions to female missionaries. However, this newfound independence is not necessarily indicative of the famously sexist Mormon church experiencing a change of heart, rather Mormon women’s newly found autonomy is a product of the feminism they have been encountered to in the past year.
The Mormon church is still one of the most patriarchal institutions in the country. In the not-so distant past the church has attracted attention for banning feminist scholars and encouraging women to drop their careers and pursue a life of domesticity. They exerted — and still do to a certain extent — a great amount of control over their female members. In 2012, when Mormon women attempted to wear pants to Sunday church services in protest, they received serious backlash. Many church members told the women their actions would never change the way the church perceived them and that their attempt at feminine strength was offensive. So the likelihood of a church suddenly reversing its opinion on feminism after years of misogyny is slim.
What has changed however is the mentality of young Mormon women and the society they are growing up in. Women in the Mormon church today interact with more feminism than Mormon women in the years prior — especially this past year. Women were given the right by the Pentagon to engage in military combat on the front lines of battle. Janet Yellen was poised to replace Ben Bernanke as the chair of the Federal Reserve.Emergency contraception had become an over-the-counter drug. And celebrities like Lena Dunham, Claire Danes, Miley Cyrus, Rashida Jones, Lady Gaga, Ellen Page and Lorde declared themselves, all in their own ways, feminists
The outpouring of feminism that occurred in 2013 was impossible to tune out. Almost everything was carried out over some form of media whether it was a TV show, a blog, a newspaper article, a tweet or a Facebook post. These opinions have inspired Mormon women to expect more from their lives than the typical Mormon domestic life. In the Times piece, a young female missionary was quoted as saying how she would not only love to be a mother, but also the head of a technology or fashion firm. Inspired by this exposure, Mormon women are realizing they truly do want more than the white picket fence lifestyle their church currently encourages.
The Mormon church altering their rules when it comes to women is not a change derived from a reversal of beliefs but rather from a climate that demands female respect. While allowing for more female missionaries is a step in the right direction, the church is too grounded in their rigid beliefs to be the catalyst for a true transformation. In the case of the Mormon church, women and the society that inspires them are the forefront of change, not the church.
