Guest Post: The Current State of LDS Working Women

by Rebecca Lucero Jones

On May 3rd, the church’s social media account shared a post with words from Camille Johnson that talked about her experience as a working mother in which she was able to follow personal promptings regarding education and prioritize family. Many women had complex reactions to this post. Not because they disagreed with her message but because this message is what women have been waiting for: the church highlighting a working mother who can proudly talk about how she has followed her dreams and is believed when she says how much she loves her family.

While this represents an important shift in LDS culture, many of us remember conference talks, gossip in wards, and families that shamed women away from dreams, promptings, impressions, and inspiration under the guise that “good mothers don’t do paid work.” Some may argue, “Yes, women were encouraged to stay home in the past, but we have progressed since then and there is room for working women in God’s kingdom.” I would argue that while Camille Johnson’s leadership and openness about her career is a good step, the shaming of working LDS women is alive and well, and it isn’t generational, and it isn’t just mothers. But before I share the findings of my research, I also think it’s important to talk about my own experience as a working mother.

In September of 2015, I suddenly became a widow, at the age of 32, when my husband had a fatal car accident while driving to work one morning. I quickly learned the importance of having a skill set outside of the home, but not just because tragedies happen. Prior to his death, I worked two days a week. For about a year prior to my husband’s death, I had felt a strong desire to return to school to get a PhD. I had no clue how I would do that while running a private therapy practice and caring for two young children under 3. When he died, I finally began to understand what to do with this strong impression. I applied to school and started my doctoral degree about a year after my husband’s death. That year in the wake of his death was the hardest year of my life. Having meaningful work and an uninterrupted resume allowed me to step into the role of breadwinner with confidence and purpose. Having my own way of contributing to society wasn’t just a way to make some vacation money (as some working women have been accused of). It was vital to my emotional and mental health to have a sense of purpose and fulfillment outside of my marriage to hold on to when experiencing such a great loss.

One thing that struck me as I pursued my doctoral degree was the level of support I received from both members of the church and my family. I truly felt like I had so many who supported me and believed in me. As someone who participates in several working women groups on Facebook, I noticed that many LDS women do not experience support for their careers. The loss of my husband shifted everyone’s perspective from considering my pursuit of additional education to be a frivolous endeavor to an act of strength in the face of tragedy. This chasm spurred me to conduct a research study with LDS women to see what conflict around women’s paid work looks like. This study is now published in the Journal of Feminist Family Therapy (Lucero Jones, 2023). Note that the study itself focuses on and describes the process by which women navigate conflict concerning their paid work in their families. This blog post will not reproduce that content due to copyright restrictions. For the purposes of this blog post, I will highlight five important take aways to consider as we continue to have a conversation about women’s paid work in LDS culture.

1. Messages discouraging paid work come from all generations, it is not a generational issue. Let me repeat that, the shaming of women’s paid work comes from all generations. It comes from siblings, cousins, in-laws, parents, grandparents, and ward members. The only relationship where the other person did not shame the woman was the marital relationship. Not a single woman of the 215 participants said that they did not have the support of their husband.

Of those who voiced opposition to a woman’s paid work, it was often communicated in passive aggressive ways. The most painful and misdirected thing people said to a working woman is statements such as, “I could never let someone else raise my kids” (referring to the use of daycare) (Lucero Jones, 2023). This comment is shaming and insinuates that working parents don’t raise their children. This misunderstanding of childcare is pervasive in LDS culture and demonstrates how work is perceived as antithetical to good mothering, yet similar statements are never made to working men.

2. LDS women who work have either had profound experiences with God guiding them to their profession, or for those who work but don’t want to, they feel immense resentment toward husbands who cannot be sole providers (Lucero Jones, 2023). This suggests that the counsel for mothers to stay home also shames men who choose professions that are not as lucrative and creates resentment in the marriage.

3. Even single women are often warned or discouraged from any work that might interfere with finding a spouse. Women talked about how they “sensed foreboding conflict as family members assumed that they would quit working after having children” (Lucero Jones, 2023). I found it interesting to learn how single women often felt that others were anxious about how their work might be the reason they weren’t married and made assumptions about whether they were creating space for a partner.

4. Families feel so much shame about their working daughters. Women who were not able to work through conflict with their families often reported that they learned to just not talk about work (Lucero Jones, 2023). So many families must feel so much shame that they can’t even ask a woman about her work or rejoice in her promotions or hard work. Even worse, families not only avoid talking about a woman’s work, but they also often make hurtful comments that suggest that they rejoice in a woman’ failures and greedily await the day when the working woman’s children have problems (Lucero Jones, 2023).

5. Change in the LDS church will not happen from the bottom up. While this may sound like a “duh” finding due to the patriarchal and hierarchical nature of the church, it is important. Women who work report that they have often been inspired or prompted by the Spirit or God to work (Lucero Jones, 2023). The shame and judgment hurled upon them has not been easy to navigate, but many of these women are certain that their pursuit of education and/or work has been a righteous one. Yet, even as more women work, whether that be part-time or full-time, they struggle to identify as a working mom when such a title has been misaligned to mean a mother who doesn’t love or prioritize her family. My research study revealed that often conflicts surrounding a woman’s choice to work were rooted in a firm conviction for both parties, where working women had conviction in their personal revelation and families had conviction in the words of church leaders (Lucero Jones, 2023). The lack of consensus among church leaders in their rhetoric provides a breeding ground for such conflicts within families.

I hope that these five takeaways help us to have a productive conversation about the current state of affairs for working women in the church. It’s unfortunate that despite efforts by Mormon feminists and increases in the amount of women working outside of the home, women’s paid work continues to be a point of shame for so many families in the church. Maybe having Camille Johnson in the spotlight symbolically signals that that there is a place for working women. I also hope that top church leaders will directly challenge the idea that only women who stay home can be good. Until then, working women can validate one another’s experiences of a culture that has been antagonistic to them and continue this conversation that challenges the erasure of women’s lived experiences with church prescribed gender roles.

Lucero Jones, R. (2023). Gender, religion, and employment: How LDS working women navigate familial conflict concerning their paid work. Journal of Feminist Family Therapy, 35(1), 24-54.