It’s the late 1960s to mid-1970s. The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints continues a century-old priesthood and temple ban against its Black members. It takes a high-profile stance against the proposed Equal Rights Amendment. And a persistent patriarchy urges women to abandon careers and return home to care for their children and husbands — all the while limiting their leadership and other opportunities within the religion.
These policies and practices create friction for a number of working women in the church. But rather than leave the fold, a number of talented trailblazing women choose instead to turn to Christ and seek personal answers to private prayers to carve their own paths and not only stay true to their religion — and their professional ambitions — but also emerge even stronger in their faith.
In these edited excerpts from a recent “Mormon Land” podcast, Robin Ritch, former president of publisher of the church-owned Deseret News and author of a newly released book, “Using Friction to Grow,” discusses their journeys — what they signified then and why they have meaning today:
Why did you write this book?
I was at lunch with Christine Durham. She was the first woman to be on the Utah Supreme Court. And she was telling me about her experiences in the 1970s with the church and what was going on — all this stuff, and I had no idea about any of it. I asked her, “Why did you stay in this faith community when there was so much push for you not living the ideal life of what they thought was ideal?” And she said something that was so interesting. She said, “Well, we knew about our grandmothers.” And, in fact, she carries around a letter from one of her grandmothers that talks about doing big things. And she said, “I just knew what they did. And so, I just kind of was like, well, that’s what I’m going to go do.” And when she said that, I felt like a light bulb went off for me, which was, we as a people, as a Latter-day Saint community, don’t have the stories of the grandmother generation. … We don’t necessarily have stories about these women and the challenges they faced and how they navigated them. … I just wanted to make sure we had their stories so that we had a model … of what they did.
(Robin Ritch) Robin Ritch, author of “Using Friction to Grow."
You chose an interesting title for your book. You note that friction is neutral. How can friction be healthy not only for an individual but also for an institution?
Sometimes we frame things that are hard as like it’s uncomfortable, and they have these negative connotations. And when you think about friction from a physical law perspective, like I drive a car, and I’m really glad for friction because that’s how my brakes work, right? … If you’re a rock, it rubs off all the rough edges. And so it’s really needed from a perspective if you’re in a growth mindset and you think, I want to grow in this life versus I’m going to stay in my cocoon and try to avoid any growth. It’s what causes growth. … On friction in organizations, one of the people I interviewed was [Mormon studies scholar] Kathleen Flake. She talked about how organizations are always going to cause friction. It’s not just religions but an organization. … There are going to be boundaries. … You’re going to bump up against those. And so, from a Latter-day Saint perspective, we do believe in friction. We believe in opposition in all things. And that includes in organizations, and it includes within our faith community and within the organization of the church.
(Salt Lake Tribune archives) Latter-day Saint scholar Claudia Bushman, left, former Utah Supreme Court Justice Christine Durham and Mormon studies scholar Kathleen Flake. All three were interviewed for the book.
The church’s family proclamation came in 1995. Do you think that codifying these gender roles — which church leaders had spoken about in the ’60s and ’70s — put a more official damper on women working?
In my book, I chose to interview people who were making career decisions between 1968 and the mid-1970s. And the reason is because they had two huge social issues they dealt with: One was Blacks and the priesthood [ban], and the other was women’s rights. And I wanted to understand how they dealt with that. So, yes, the codification of that in the family proclamation, that’s a really interesting point. If anything, it has created more confusion because it’s been codified. When we say gender is eternal [in the proclamation], for instance, I don’t know exactly what that means. Do you mean the gender role is eternal? That makes me wonder because I don’t know what women were doing in 1185 B.C. So I don’t know what their role was then, but we’ve decided what it looks like right now. So I do think it potentially added a little more confusion than there was before by codifying it and still leaving it very ambiguous at the same time.
Church historian Jill Mulvay Derr told you that it takes pushing from inside and outside to bring change. Can you point to examples where that has happened in the church?
When she was saying inside and outside, she specifically was working at the church in church history. … She felt like her role was internally to push things but also externally as well. She would talk about temple changes … that happened from people pushing from inside who worked at the church as well as outside people, herself included, going to every temple president and saying, “Do you understand this? This doesn’t seem to sit right with me.” The bigger question is when you are part of the faith community, what is your role? How do you get to a place where you’re like, “This is causing me too much friction. I’ve got my own kind of sense of what this could potentially look like that would make it a bit better or more equitable or more Christlike.”
One of my takeaways from these interviews is that all of these women were very articulate, were very educative in their sphere of influence to be able to say, “I’m doing this. I believe in my faith community, and I still need this. But this is my answer, and this is the process I went through.” … So I feel like that’s one of the ways to push from outside, or part of the faith community, is to live true to your answers, and then be very articulate and educative to other people so that they understand that’s the path. Have your own relationship with God, but, at the same time, leverage what you hear from the prophet and from other people in your community, in your faith community, to make your life richer and have a better stance on those decisions that you make.
What about outside pressure that comes from the media or members talking to the media?
What you’re talking about is an engagement in the public square — an engagement in the public square to move forth ideals that are really important to you. I think that’s one of the things that is super important. You see engagement in different forums that women and men do. But I think that’s a really big piece — to be engaged in the public square and in the conversations. I love what [Latter-day Saint writer] Judy Dushku said in the book. She said, “speak up, speak up, speak up” — not only in your faith community but also in the public square. Be a voice for reason and a voice to move things forward.
(Illustration by Christopher Cherrington | The Salt Lake Tribune)
Several of the women you talked to lived in Boston. How was that different for them than living in Utah?
There’s a hotbed of areas where the women got together and supported one another. And Boston, a hundred percent was one of those. Palo Alto, California, was another one. Those women came up with a newspaper and magazine and did all these things together.
Do you think that they got less pushback than if they had lived in Utah?
All of the women I interviewed left Utah for education or other purposes and eventually came back. That being said, in Boston, they had a lot of people supporting them. At some point, they did get a lot of pushback from the central organization of the church. … It’s different when you’re in Utah than it is outside of Utah, for sure.
Do you think the word feminist is still seen as a bad word in the church, theologically and culturally?
So coming into Utah, because I was going to run the Deseret News, I was unaware that the word feminism was a problem. It’s not a problem anywhere else. And I was counseled more than a couple of times, “If you say that kind of stuff, you’re going to be seen as a feminist.” And my immediate reaction was, “By feminist, you mean that I think men and women are equal? Because I do think that.” And certainly, from a faith perspective, God values them equally. So it was an eye-opening experience to come here and realize that [feminism] was labeled as a negative word. Most of these women [in the book] would say they were feminists. That’s who they were. They just thought men and women were equal. And that was how they lived their lives.
Anecdotally, from my own experiences coming to Utah and even with things we see on social media — like the Instagram situation with a [Latter-day Saint husband] saying, “I’m going to stay home, and my wife’s going to be a doctor,” and the whole internet blowing up over it on the [church] account — those things lead me to believe that that is still a piece of our culture, that feminism means bad.
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David is a managing editor at The Tribune, where he has worked since 1984. He oversees coverage ranging from local government and west-side issues to growth, development and housing. In addition, he directs religion reporting, co-hosts the award-winning “Mormon Land” podcast and writes the Mormon Land newsletter.
Hired in 1991 to cover Utah's various faiths, particularly Mormonism, Peggy has talked forgiveness with Archbishop Desmond Tutu, nearly fainted waiting for the Dalai Lama, fasted with Muslims during Ramadan — and has reported on 50 consecutive semiannual LDS General Conferences.