Understanding Compliance in Patriarchal Religions: Mormon Women and the Latter Day Saints Church as a Case Study

Reid Leamaster,Andres Bautista

doi:10.3390/rel9050143

Reid Leamaster, Andres Bautista

Open Access

https://doi.org/10.3390/rel9050143

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Abstract

Defining compliance as acquiescence in situations of inequality, this article explores patterns of compliance to gender traditionalism from the analysis of interviews with Mormon women. Analysis reveals that Mormon women face unique, context-specific mechanisms for stifling resistance to gender traditionalism. Additionally, many of the Mormon women interviewed who do not comply with traditional gender expectations regarding motherhood still accept and defend gender traditionalism. We explain this pattern with a concept that we call ideological compensation, which means that women in gender traditional religions defend gender traditionalism even if they do not live it as a way to compensate for their non-compliance. Finally, we find that some of the women frame their compliance to Mormon gender traditionalism as a statement of resistance against the broader society. We describe this phenomenon with a concept known as subcultural resistance. Overall, this study sheds light on how Mormon women interpret traditional gender expectations and the mechanisms that are put in place to stifle resistance.

Highlights

Why do people in situations of subordination comply with expectations that seem to work against their autonomy and power? How do organizations and individuals who benefit from other’s subordination stifle resistance? These meta-questions are central to sociological inquiry and underlie the research that is presented here
This article investigates: (a) the mechanisms that are used to stifle resistance—or ensure compliance—to gender traditionalism in the Mormon context; (b) whether Mormon women who do not conform to gender traditionalism accept gender traditional ideologies; and, (c) how Mormon women contextualize their compliance to gender traditionalism as acts of subcultural resistance against the broader society
We offer the concept of ideological compensation as an explanation for why the single women that were interviewed for the study strongly affirm gender traditionalism

Summary

Introduction

Why do people in situations of subordination comply with expectations that seem to work against their autonomy and power? How do organizations and individuals who benefit from other’s subordination stifle resistance? These meta-questions are central to sociological inquiry and underlie the research that is presented here. We explore these questions from the perspective of women in the Mormon Church—an organization that espouses traditional gender expectations. This article investigates: (a) the mechanisms that are used to stifle resistance—or ensure compliance—to gender traditionalism in the Mormon context; (b) whether Mormon women who do not conform to gender traditionalism accept gender traditional ideologies; and, (c) how Mormon women contextualize their compliance to gender traditionalism as acts of subcultural resistance against the broader society. Most studies of women in religious organizations that espouse gender traditionalism show how women find room for agentic action within the constraints of religious gender expectation (Leamaster and Einwohner 2017). This is important research because it dispels

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