Mormon women still seek their place in society. The world has dominated our direction, pulling us to think a certain way. It is important to understand the Lord’s way. It is my opinion that Eliza R. Snow got it right.
She was the “Presidentess-Prophetess of the nineteenth century”. For twenty years she captained Utah women “in almost everything pertaining to women’s advancement among her people”. She distrusted “that class known as ‘strong minded’ who are strenuously and unflinchingly advocating ‘woman’s rights’”. She explained, “Not that we are opposed to woman suffrage…But to think of a war of sexes which the woman’s rights movement would inevitably inaugurate,…creates an involuntary shudder!”
In the Salt Lake Tabernacle, in January 1870, Eliza asked the women, “Do you know of any place on the face of the earth, where woman has more liberty, and where she enjoys such high and glorious privileges as she does here, as a Latter-day Saint?”
In the 1880’s, Mormon women had significant duties and responsibilities inside and outside their homes. In 1888, at the International Council of Women, held in Washington, D.C., Utah delegates reported that 400 Relief societies in Utah held property valued at $95,000. Many societies owned the halls in which they met. Mormon women published their own bi-weekly newspaper titled the Woman’s Exponent. The Relief Society managed a hospital with a woman as a resident surgeon. The women of Zion had contributed significantly to the territory’s economy through their participation in silk production and their mercantile cooperatives promoting home manufacture. By the turn of the century, Mormon women were more vocal and involved in politics, economy and welfare services than any other women’s organization in the nation.
As influential as Mormon women were, they understood their place. Feminists attacked a male-dominated society; Eliza defended it. Miss Anthony decried “Woman’s utter dependence on man”; Eliza deemed it essential to woman’s salvation. Mrs. Stanton attacked established religion for placing women in an inferior position; Eliza acknowledged man’s superiority and never ceased to defend it doctrinally. Eliza instructed, “Order is heaven’s first law and it is utterly impossible for order to exist without … gradation.” Man and woman cannot occupy the same position. “We stand in a different position from the ladies of the world; we have made a covenant with God, we understand his order, and know that that order requires submission on the part of women.” With this knowledge, they were honoring God by honoring his priesthood.
Eliza, and her Relief Society sisters, did not consider themselves slaves by any means; they were stewards. As in the parable of the talents, they were stewards in the act of doubling what they had been given. Stewards relieve their masters of certain tasks and in that process make decisions of consequence. Women often narrow their own field by emphasizing the drudgery of life. Eliza expounded, “Do we realize our responsibilities? And that we have as much to do with the salvation of our souls as the brethren? They cannot save us, we must save ourselves.”
Eliza R. Snow told the Brigham City Relief Society, “Sometimes I think we can do more than the brethren.” It was the women who initiated all of the welfare programs in the valley. The Associations for the various age groups was a brainchild of women. Without taking over, Eliza used subtle means of communication.
Eliza felt the young men should be organized as the young ladies were. Without dictating this to the leaders of the church, she went a different route. While preparing for a meeting for the young ladies in Lehi, she instructed them to bring their beaux. She later reported the outcome of her objective:
“I asked the young men to vote and told them I wanted them to sustain the young ladies in their positions; and also if they did not leave off their drinking and tobacco where were the young girls to get husbands? The young men did not wish the young girls to be in advance of them. I heard the next morning that the young men had been after the Bishop to organize them before night.”
It was Joseph Smith who told the women, in Nauvoo, that they might “provoke the brethren to good works”. Eliza R. Snow stressed that women would benefit if they would obey the priesthood in whatever they tried to accomplish. She was advocating not passivity, but righteous submission. “As sure as the sisters arise and take hold of the work, the brethren will wake up, because they must be at the head.” If the brethren opposed anything the women were doing, a detailed explanation might be offered. But ultimately, “we will do as we are directed by the Priesthood.”
Information taken from Battle for the Ballot compiled by Carol Cornwall Madsen