Is Mormon feminism different than American feminism? No and Yes. Mormon feminism experienced and embodied the same historic First and Second Waves in American history and successive feminist waves since. Mormon women had similar concerns, approaches and discourses to those of American feminists, such as female advocacy, spirituality, temperance, suffrage, societies and protests. "Mormon feminism coincided with its American counterparts. Nineteenth-century Mormon women demonstrated liberal and cultural feminism in their writing and activities; this may have resulted from their own response to Mormonism, more than from a direct influence by American feminism." (W&A "Introduction").
Mormon feminism also emerged within its own religious context and needs in Mormon culture, thus it embodied its own culturally-specific responses and discourses. It has a unique identity as feminism within LDS Church culture. LDS women created their own feminist texts and discourses, such as the minutes of the 1842 Female Relief Society of Nauvoo, and the 1872 Woman's Exponent, and the 1889 Young Woman's Journal, and the 1914 Relief Society Magazine, and the 1974 Exponent II, and the 1977 Mormons for ERA newsletter, and the 1977 Algie Ballif Forum, and the 1990 Mormon Women's Forum, and 1992 VOICE group at BYU, as well as the 2005 Segullah journal and 2007 Feminist Mormon Housewives web site, and 2014 Ordain Women group -- plus countless other groups and blogs, including ones dealing with the Mormon divine feminine.
Is Mormon feminism unitary? No, there are nearly as many different feminisms in Mormon culture as in American culture, ranging from cultural to radical, liberal to eco-feminist, intersectional to queer, and post-modern to post-feminist. There is no single Mormon feminist movement or discourse or founders, but many feminists emerging independently across locations and time, from 1830 to the present. Mormon feminism is "not found in one perspective or pronouncement but in many simultaneous views and approaches ...there is no unifying feminist consensus— we must validate our diversity...Mormon feminists seem to know that one feminist view, one strategy, one struggle is not enough...There is no single unified Mormon feminism or feminist theology; rather, it is a complex hybrid attempting to combine many parts into wholeness." (W&A, "Introduction")
Feminisms have arisen in Mormon culture via women's personal responses to specific circumstances and needs, as women used their agency and vision to solve those needs and create solutions. This began with Emma Hale Smith in 1827-30 as she co-founded the LDS Church with her husband Joseph, using her own agency.
A variety of cultural and liberal feminist views entered the Church from 1830-44 as American women with visionary and spiritual practices joined the new Mormon movement, bringing their own spiritual gifts, practices and relationship with God with them into the emerging church. Women innovated and created their own response to Mormon faith, initiated their own practices and founded their own female society, as well as managing it and their ministry.
These early LDS women believed they were restoring spiritual practices and authority of biblical matriarchs, prophetesses, priestesses, and disciples, as well as receiving new revelations for the modern world. They believed they were called to share a higher divine vision of women's spiritual equality with men, via leadership, voting, ministry, priesthood, vocations, public service, homesteading, business, and suffrage. Mormon women embodied cultural and liberal feminist ideas, activities and movements of the 1800s-1900s along with their American counterparts.
19th-century Mormon feminists collaborated and organized around a common cause, like building the Kirtland and Nauvoo temples, caring for the poor, using spiritual gifts of blessing and healing, advocating women's suffrage, and protesting anti-Mormon views. Their feminist unity was possible due the central locations of the Church in Kirtland, Nauvoo, Winter Quarters, and Salt Lake.
20th-century Mormon feminists were more dispersed in location, efforts, and diversity resulting in relative isolation due to a lack of central location and networking. As a result, many feminists were unaware of each other. For example, in the 1970s-80s, many Mormon feminists felt alone until discovering the Exponent II in 1974 and MERA in 1977, and Mormon Women's Forum in 1988. Even in the 1990s, some feminists knew little about each other, or hadn't heard of the Woman's Exponent or Exponent II, or Mormons for ERA-- until Women and Authority was published in 1992. Likewise, in 2006 when Feminist Mormon Housewives emerged, they were unaware of other feminist groups.
Each Mormon feminist and each group emerged authentically and independently on its own within its own situation and context, by responding to its own needs and using its own feminist approach or effort, often isolated.
In 1992, Women and Authority brought public visibility and awareness to Mormon feminism, its history and its diversity--by gathering information and excerpts about major LDS feminist efforts into one book. This visibility increased greatly after the book triggered a controversy in 1993, resulting in the excommunication of several feminist contributors.
However, a positive result of the backlash against Mormon feminists in the 1990s was that it increased LDS feminist visibility and accessibility by giving it national and international publicity and sympathy, as well as increasing networking and participation between feminists.
However, a positive result of the backlash against Mormon feminists in the 1990s was that it increased LDS feminist visibility and accessibility by giving it national and international publicity and sympathy, as well as increasing networking and participation between feminists.
The advent of the internet also increased networking and collaboration of Mormon feminists across the nation and world, with online groups and projects like ELWC (Electronic Latter-day Women's Caucus) in 1993 and Mormon Feminist Network in 1999 and Feminist Mormon Housewives in 2006 and Exponent II online in 2008. Mormon feminist discourse, networking, and activism have exploded online with web sites, blogs, Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and organizations like Sunstone and Ordain Women, as well as protests, blogs, videos, podcasts, publications, and projects like promoting the LDS Mother in Heaven.
Isn't Mormon feminism a recent phenomenon? No. Isn't it a secular tradition borrowed by Mormons? No. Isn't it a small marginal minority? No.
LDS women have exhibited feminism since the Church's beginnings, via their own agency, vision, efforts and responses to their religious context. LDS women exerted to improve women's status, self-definition, practices and empowerment within their faith, and beyond it, using feminist ideas and voice.
LDS women have exhibited feminism since the Church's beginnings, via their own agency, vision, efforts and responses to their religious context. LDS women exerted to improve women's status, self-definition, practices and empowerment within their faith, and beyond it, using feminist ideas and voice.
In 1830, the LDS Church gave women the vote along with men in Mormon society, and high female office parallel to male office. The 1842 Relief Society was an ecclesiastical parallel to male priesthood with divine authority, female ordinances and priesthood. The 1843, temple rites gave women and men ordination to fullness of priesthood authority and powers. The 1870 Utah women's suffrage effort was based on LDS belief in spiritual equality of genders The 1872 LDS Woman's Exponent promoted Utah suffrage via its slogan "The rights of the women of Zion and the rights of the women of all nations."
Mormon women exhibited feminist efforts via religious vision, innovation, leadership, management, spiritual gifts & practices, female theology, priesthood, temperance and suffrage. They exercised voting within the Church, and legal activities, they created and owned their own businesses, pursued equal opportunity in education and careers, led the suffrage cause in America 1870-1920, obtained public office and positions, and used birth control.
Mormon feminists are home-grown in their own religious tradition, locations and culture, from LDS origins to the present. Mormon feminism is its own unique intersection of gender, religion and culture. LDS feminists have been leaders inside Church culture as well as in the larger American culture.
For example, Esther Peterson was the highest-ranking woman in the Kennedy Administration and was Asst. Secretary of Labor, who implemented the Equal Pay Act, and product labeling of all foods. Laurel Thatcher Ulrich was a distinguished Harvard professor who won the Pulitzer Prize for history in 1991 with her book, The Midwife's Tale.
Well-known feminists in American culture include singers and actresses like Marie Osmond, Gladys Knight, Julianne Hough, and Katherine Heigl; also political figures like Rep. Algie Ballif, legislator Amy B. Lyman, ERA founder Sonia Johnson, Utah Chief Justice Christine M. Durham, and U.S. Treasurer Angela Buchannan. Successful LDS women authors include Stephenie Meyer, Anne Perry, Bettie Eadie and Carol Lynn Pearson.
Today, Mormon feminism is highly diverse, empowered, and publicly active via online causes, groups, activism, blogs, podcasts, and social media. Mormon feminism can be seen in independent organizations like Exponent II or Feminist Mormon Housewives, as well as in institutional Church locations like BYU and the Church Historical Dept. Each feminist is unique, self-defined, and each project is situationally designed to address a specific context, concern, or need.
Mormon feminists are found in the mainstream of LDS culture today because they are "building on the previous work of their feminist foremothers...and striving to move beyond old battles by assuming feminism as a basic given and exploring new territories." (W&A, "Introduction.")
Feminism has arrived in Mormon culture as a given, not by way of adoption from outside secular sources but by way of self definition and innovation from inside the faith's own tradition.
--Maxine Hanks © 2022
