Mormonism and women

The status of women in Mormonism has been a source of public debate since before the death of Joseph Smith in 1844. Various denominations within the Latter Day Saint movement have taken different paths on the subject of women and their role in the church and in society. Views range from the full equal status and ordination of women to the priesthood, as practiced by the Community of Christ, to a patriarchal system practiced by The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS Church), to the ultra-patriarchal plural marriage system practiced by the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints (FLDS Church) and other Mormon fundamentalist groups.

Nineteenth and early 20th-century accounts of Mormon history often neglected women's role in founding the religion. The 1872 history The Rise, Progress, and Travels of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints does not name any women. B.H. Roberts's famous seven-volume history, History of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints only mentions a few women. However, a number of women had significant supporting roles; for example, Joseph Smith's wife, Emma Hale Smith, served as a scribe during translation of the Book of Mormon and was the subject of one of the church's early revelations, which included direction to compile the church's first hymnal. Emma Smith also served as head of the Relief Society, originally a self-governing women's organization within the church, which is one of the oldest and largest women's organizations in the world.

In the secular sphere, Utah Territory was at the forefront of women's suffrage; in 1870, it became one of the first states or territories in the Union to grant women the vote, though the federal government removed the franchise from women in 1887 via the Edmunds–Tucker Act. Education and scholarship was also a primary concern for Mormon women. Religious missions, like Bathsheba W. Smith's mission to southern Utah to preach "woman's rights", were launched. The Woman's Exponent magazine, the unofficial publication of the Relief Society, published a 1920 editorial in favor of "equal rights before the law, equal pay for equal work, [and] equal political rights", stating that a women's place is not just "in the nursery" but "in the library, the laboratory, the observatory." In 1875, Relief Society president Emmeline B. Wells said that women should speak for themselves, and if that is considered manly, that should be a good thing, since if men are superior, becoming more masculine ought to be desirable.:

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