Ann Eliza accused Young of neglect, cruel treatment, and deserting herself and her children in the harsh conditions of frontier Utah.
Patty Bartlett Sessions recorded giving and receiving blessings from other women in her work as a midwife,[14] as did Louisa Barnes Pratt in her life as a pioneer and a missionary.
[15]: 153 Relief Society president Eliza Snow believed that women did not need to be "set apart" to officiate in temple ordinances or in administering to the sick.
To note only these extremes, however, is to ignore that Mormon women chose to participate in polygamy and the fact that it was a part of their daily lives.
[3][page needed] Women in polygamous relationships at the time described the experience as a great trial that taught them self-denial.
"[3] Ezra Taft Benson stated that women have qualities of faithfulness, benevolence, and charity that balance the "more aggressive and competitive nature of man".
[8]: 366 Though not considered clergy, women play a significant part in the operation of local congregations[29] teaching classes to adults, teenagers, and children and organizing social, educational, and humanitarian activities.
[31] Prior to the announcement, members from some countries were allowed to serve from the younger age to avoid conflict with educational or military requirements.
[36] A survey conducted in 2012 of 500 Mormons in the United States showed that if they were married to a Latter-day Saint spouse, men and women had equal levels of church activity.
Some examples from the 1800s include that of Orson Pratt who wrote in 1852 that a woman should not marry a man unless she "had fully resolved herself to submit herself wholly to his counsel, and let him govern as the head".
[43]: 18 Early prophet Brigham Young stated of his wives, "The influence of my women over me is no more than the buzzing of a fly's wing in winter."
[45]: 144 After the Manifesto prohibiting plural marriage, members felt that there was a lack of available Mormon men for women to marry, even though there were a sufficient number.
"[63] Numerous quotes from General Authorities support the assertion that women are fundamentally different from men, not just in their physical bodies, but in their spiritual makeup as well.
"[67] A 1986 Ensign article emphasized that husband and wife share the responsibility of providing for their children's temporal needs, and that each family would prayerfully decide if a mother would go to work.
[69]: 208 Relief Society lessons were then created to be messages from the church as a whole, "providing no individual model of a professional woman for others to know and follow".
Then-BYU-president Jeffrey R. Holland stated that BYU especially welcomed women, and encouraged personal study and revelation about how to follow church guidelines.
[72] LuLaRich is a documentary about LuLaRoe, a clothing company started by a Mormon couple, which explores these beliefs and how they translated into recruiting distributors for the product.
On one occasion he called his daughters together and announced that they were too quick to follow the fashions of "the world", and he insisted they modify their manner of dress.
Young asked them to stop wearing bustles altogether and implored them to cut back on the frivolities of their appearance in order to set an example for the rest of the female members of the church to follow.
Men received instruction to avoid long hair and beards because of their association with counterculture; women's dress standards were created to protect their virtue.
For example, the new passage which corresponds to the past edition's statement on modesty now reads: "Avoid styles that emphasize or draw inappropriate attention to your physical body instead of who you are as a child of God with an eternal future.
[87]: 51 A 1984 study by David Spendlove found that poor health, low income, less education, and less perceived caring from spouse were positively correlated with depression in LDS women in Utah.
[88] Another study by Jacobsen and Wright in 2014 found that Mormon women who experience same-sex attraction feel isolation and worthlessness and need to form a positive self-identity.
[100] In the past the use of birth control methods including artificial contraception was explicitly condemned by LDS Church leaders.
Beginning in July 1916, apostles were quoted stating that birth control was a "pernicious doctrine" and that "limiting the number of children in a family...is sinful".
[104] The church "strongly discourages" surgical sterilization like vasectomies and tubal ligation and encourages members to only turn to it for serious medical conditions after discussing it with a bishop.
The fourteen thousand attendees, mostly Latter-day Saint women recruited in their wards, voted on platforms before hearing their discussion and rejected all the national resolutions[13]—even those that did not advocate a moral position opposed to that of the LDS Church.
[13]: 637 Sonia Johnson[111] fought against the church in support of the Equal Rights Amendment and was excommunicated; a December 1979 excommunication letter claimed that Johnson was charged with a variety of misdeeds, including hindering the worldwide missionary program, damaging internal Mormon social programs, and teaching false doctrine.
However, any members who are viewed as publicly oppositional toward the church's current structure are subject to ecclesiastical discipline, including excommunication for apostasy.
[120]: 243–244 Brigham Young University (BYU), the LDS Church's flagship educational institution, has made several changes in its policy towards women.