Mormon women have a history of political and community activism going back to the nineteenth century. The year 2020 marks 150 years since Utah Territory removed gender-based voting restrictions and 100 years since the franchise was extended to white women across the United States in 1920. England, Canada and other countries followed suit within the next decade, places like Mexico and India by the 1950s, and in the 1960s the vote was finally secured in the United States and Canada for indigenous, Asian, and Black women. Throughout this time and ever since, Mormon women have spoken, marched, and worked to shape their communities.
How are you using your vote, voice and volunteer time? For our Summer 2020 issue, Exponent II is soliciting personal essays on women’s engagement in the public sphere: local and national, political and humanitarian, professional and ad hoc. How have your personal experiences or identities influenced your political participation? With so much injustice and dysfunction in the world, how have you chosen what to focus on and what to let go? Have your beliefs and priorities changed over time? What moves you to act? The readers and writers of the 19th century Woman’s Exponent engaged in lively debate about the issues of the day while working tirelessly to achieve the ends they desired. We would love to know how you carry on the tradition of our spiritual foremothers to be a force for good in the world. We welcome submissions from all kinds of women with varying points of view from around the world.
Submissions should be in Word or Google Doc form and between 700-2400 words. Send submissions to exponentiieditor AT gmail DOT com by April 1, 2020. Submissions should reflect the mission of Exponent II.
