Say More: At Last She Writes It

No. 7 | January 2024

photo by Cynthia Winward

What Women Don’t Get in our Church

by Cynthia Winward

Note: If you’d like to hear Cynthia read this essay, you’ll find it on At Last She Said It Episode 168, here.

As I sat in a restaurant having dinner with a friend, I lamented to her

how I wish women could have more leadership opportunities in the Church. Her reply was that she liked sleeping in on Sundays and would prefer to have her husband be the one to get up early and attend bishopric meetings instead of her. On the surface this doesn’t sound so bad.

What woman, or man, would want more responsibility? What normal person would want to attend more meetings? I am always up for less work as well, but this isn’t about a willingness to attend early church meetings. It is about women having a voice at every table. It is about the ability to affect decisions that affect women. It is about making decisions that take into account the needs and perspectives of all Latter-day saints, not just the male ones. It is about hearing and being heard, but just as important, it’s about seeing women in charge. It is important to see women lead, not just leading women and children, but all members.

1 Corinthians 12:21 reads, “And the eye cannot say unto the hand, I have no need of thee: nor again the head to the feet, I have no need of you.” Yet it very much feels like women are told, “we have no need of you in leadership.”

When I talk to Latter-day Saint women who are happy with an all-male clergy, they advise me to listen to this certain talk, or that certain Youtube video, by this or that female church member. They advise me to read this book about priesthood, or that podcast by a woman who so eloquently explains how amazing and forward-thinking we are as a church towards our women—as if my disappointment is a matter of not knowing all the facts rather than the disappointment in those facts. I have thought about the status of women in our church for decades, have they?

Spoiler: if you have to explain equality then it doesn’t exist. Equality would be measurable, factual, and obvious.