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Two years ago, when I was writing a book about my own life as a Mormon, of which I am an authority, I was filled with anxieties about not being good enough, not smart enough, and on and on. My wise editor, Blair Hodges, was patient and listened for many weeks and then one day he said a line that has changed everything for me. He said, “Listen, no one else is going to take you seriously until you take yourself seriously.” The doors swung wide open.

I have looked back on that experience so often and wondered why it was that I felt so much insecurity about asserting my voice. Not my voice as part of a chorus of other voices, or one that had offered ideas to someone else, not my voice as an influence, but my voice, as a stand alone entity. In the two years since, I’ve realized that my panic was much in part because my voice had never been taken seriously up to that point in my life. In church spaces I had never been in charge. I had never had a platform that was solely and authoritatively mine in which to speak. Particularly one in which both genders recognized that a female was in charge. Even though in theory I had been given freedom and power to use my voice within the church, in practice, I had not.

I recently read a quote from the Instagram account, holy_sponge, that gave a scaffolding for the ways I have often felt as a female in the church. “When people in the dominant group tell non-dominant groups they need to ‘step up’, it continues to lay the workload on marginalized groups.” This quote was in specific reference to the Recording Academy president, Neil Portnow, and his words to women in the industry when only a single woman received a televised Grammy. He said, “It has to begin with … women who have the creativity in their hearts and souls, who want to be musicians, who want to be engineers, producers, and want to be part of the industry on the executive level … [They need] to step up because I think they would be welcome.”

I don’t think the problem here is women without things to say, it’s that up to this point, we haven’t been made welcome in far too many circumstances. You cannot claim to want to hear my voice and then not provide a single space in which I might do that, particularly in front of both men and women.

I am lucky that in my church experience, I actually have been given several platforms in which to use my voice. The Maxwell Institute was wonderful and supportive in not dictating stipulations or making me feel like I couldn’t take the lead on both what I wrote in One Hundred Birds Taught Me to Fly, and then the ways in which I arranged the book tour and events proceeding its release. The people at this blog have encouraged me to use my voice unfettered and unchecked. The BCC Press has gone to great lengths to make sure that women’s manuscripts are published. I live in a stake where our Stake Presidency has made sure that women are heard at every conference in equal numbers with the men and they have a place at every meeting that they hold as a stake presidency. In my home my husband does not call on me to say a prayer. So many women are without a platform though, and even in this space, I am exhausted and frustrated at the hope of ever having much, if any say in the future of the institutional church.

I want to speak for a moment then to the white men of the church. First, know that I love you. I am married to a very good one. I have been supported, encouraged and listened to on an individual level by literally hundreds of you throughout my life. But also, it is not enough. I want to ask you to take a moment and take stock of how and where you are creating platforms for women to use their voices and take the lead in your own life. The truth of the matter is that as much as both women and men talk about and want gender equality in the church, there is no space or way in which I can personally take the lead in a church setting. Leena, who runs the instgram account quoted previously goes on to say, “Almost everyone experiences some kind of oppression at sometime in their lives—some more than others, and it’s important to know when you have power/privilege and how to step back, how to help shift the conditions, how to make more space for everyone and change what the norm looks like. It’s important to not lay the workload on the under represented.”

So, men, I cannot simply step up, or be out spoken, or demand anything without you also doing the same. In part because if I am out spoken or too “progressive” in a church setting, I am silenced by simply not being given a calling in which I might speak out, I am not invited to meetings or councils run by men, or I am not asked to speak in sacrament, stake conference, etc… If you do not also carry the load in doing the work to build platforms for women to speak, lead and implement their own ideas within the church, they will not happen. You cannot claim to be pushing for gender equality if you are not in some way working for this.

A few questions you might ask:

“What am I doing before my voice is heard first (and often only)?”

“What am I doing specifically to provide platforms in which women can take equal part in leading, speaking, sharing ideas, carrying out ideas?”

“Am I willing to give up some of my power, time or convenience so that a marginalized group can have a turn, even if that looks different than how I might do things?”

Honestly, I believe that so many men, at least the ones I know, would answer in thoughtfully and affirmatively to these questions. I think they are and would be willing to do this work. That intention doesn’t mean that it is actually happening in the ways it could and should though.

If we want our daughters to stick around, we have got to do the work of taking them seriously. Ruth Bader Ginsberg, when asked when there would be enough women on the supreme court, answers, “When there are nine.” I am not proposing, nor do I even think it is anywhere on the horizon to have women take over the leadership of the church, but I do think it’s vital to begin by checking our mindsets. No one blinked an eye when nine men made up the supreme court for nearly 200 years. Why would we be aghast to imagine nine women there?

Gender equality in the church is not simply a woman’s issue. The work of building has to be done side by side, and in many cases, because of the structure, with men being the vanguard. My friends are leaving, my family members are leaving, our missionary work suffers, when we simply give lip service to phrases like “step up.”

It should be noted and made very clear that while this post is focused on women’s equality in the church, that phrase could easily be swapped out or combined with the work we are doing for POC, LGBTQ, and any other marginalized group that belongs to the body of Christ.

We all have work to do, myself included. May we do it with love and courage.