Women's Resistance to and Compliance with Gendered Expectations in the LDS Church

Reid J Leamaster, Purdue University

Abstract

This dissertation explores how women in religions with traditional gender expectations that exacerbate gender inequity resist and comply with these expectations. Using the LDS Church as a case study, I use interviews with Mormon women to trace patterns of resistance and compliance to the Church's prescriptions for what men and women should do and to what they are entitled. The first substantive chapter investigates the extent to which the participants in the study resist gender inequity and why some women resisted more. Based on my findings, I argue that a significant minority of religious women do oppose religious patriarchy in their everyday lives and that some women resisted more because they were able to draw on "resistance toolkits". In other words, some women had cultural resources such as alternative narratives about appropriate gender expectations for men and women that put them in a better position to resist gender inequity on the Church. The second substantive chapter seeks to understand why religious women comply with gender expectations that facilitate gender inequity. In particular, I present mechanisms used to stifle resistance found in the interviews. I found that previous concepts and theories related to how the powerful stifle resistance were clearly portrayed in the interviews. In Chapter 3 I also present new conceptual approaches to understanding compliance in conservative religions. For example, I use a concept called "ideological compensation" to explain why some of the women participants I interviewed who seem to be in a position to resist traditional gender expectations mostly went out of their way to express their support of these expectations. In short, I argue these women want to portray that they are good, obedient Mormon women even though they do not meet the ideal for Mormon womanhood. However, as I argue in Chapter 3, sometimes compliance is framed as resistance to the broader society — complicating the notion that a lack of resistance in situations in inequality can be equated to compliance. Chapter 4 stays with the overall theme of agency in conservative religion, but incorporates interviews with Mormon men and the intersectionality theoretical approach to reveal how an individual's social location affects the extent to which religious cultural schemas enable or constrain a religious individual's agency. I find that class and region, specifically living outside of Utah or having a middle class background, are important factors that curb the constraining affects of LDS gendered cultural schemas. Given the findings of Chapter 4, I call for more intersectional studies that compare religious adherents across traditions as well as compare the religious and the non-religious. In the concluding chapter, I review the key findings and conclusions from the dissertation and present a theoretical model, displayed in Figure 5.1, that helps elucidate the theoretical contributions of this dissertation. Chapter 5 also outlines suggested future directions for incorporating the intersectionality approach to studies of gender and religion.

Degree

Ph.D.

Advisors

Olson, Purdue University.

Subject Area

Religion|Womens studies

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