I read some discussion on Facebook recently of a diagram showing the organization of the Church. I think the diagram was something like what’s shown in this post, but I’m not completely sure. Whatever the exact details of the diagram, what’s important about it is that the structure it showed included only men: First Presidency, Quorum of the Twelve, Seventies, stake presidents, bishops, etc. The striking thing was its exclusion of women.

I don’t fault the person who made the diagram or whoever shared it. It looked to me like it accurately captured how the Church is structured. If women are included anywhere, it’s at the margins, and perhaps informally, if any of the men in positions of authority ever discuss issues they’re facing with their wives.

I do think it’s interesting, though, that to be included in the hierarchy, men must be married. Bishops I think have to be married by rule. I’m not sure if it’s a rule for the other positions, but if it isn’t, it’s at least an extremely strong norm. The fact that each of these men is married but that their wives aren’t shown reminded me of diagrams of the structures of molecules that one of my kids was showing me recently. In at least some forms of these diagrams, most hydrogen atoms are not included explicitly. They are just assumed to be bonded at each atom where they would be required for the atom to have the right number of valence electrons.

Here’s an example, courtesy of the NIH’s PubChem website:

You can see that a few of the hydrogens are depicted, but most are not. (The formula for this molecule is C 19 H 28 O 2 , so with four hydrogens shown, there must be 24 more implied.)

Like most analogies, this one will break down pretty quickly if you poke it at all, but I still think there are a few shared characteristics that might be interesting. Hydrogen is the most abundant element in the universe, so it can just be assumed that it will always be there to round out any molecule that needs it. Similarly, active women outnumber active men in the Church, so there’s really little concern for them. Whenever there’s a special focus for missionary work or retention or reactivation, it’s on men. It’s assumed that there are enough active women already. Whenever there’s a ward boundary realignment, it’s the active men who are counted to be sure there are a minimum number in each newly-created ward. Active women are just assumed to be plentiful, and they aren’t explicitly accounted for.

A molecular diagram is showing a physical reality, and it makes sense that it would be formatted to make be as usable as possible. Showing all the hydrogens, especially for a large molecule, could make the diagram really difficult to read. Along the same lines, a structural diagram of the Church hierarchy is showing an organizational reality. And that reality includes the fact that the top leadership and stake- and ward-level leaders are all male. It could get unwieldy to show all the women married to the male leaders. Still, it would be nice to acknowledge the existence of women in such a diagram, either by showing the leaders’ wives, or by expanding to show general and local level women leaders as well. Unlike the physical reality of a molecule, though, the organizational reality of the Church could be changed. It would be preferable to respond to the glaring absence of women in an organizational diagram not by expanding it to include places where women are present, but rather by just changing the rules to allow women to be included in the leadership positions in the first place.

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In case you didn’t click on it to check, the chemical diagram above is for testosterone.