“Having the shorter term…minimizes the whole experience, turning an actual sacrifice of time into something that seems a little more…like just a fling with missionary work.” Unfortunately, that might be part of the point of it. Just like the different age requirement, it is another way of saying “we don’t really want you”. You can go, if you insist, but we’ll do what we can to minimize it. Yes, I am a little bitter tonight.

Having a daughter currently serving a mission, I agree with all of your points. I have a couple dear friends who have sons currently serving missions. They both posted a video made from a mothers perspective about her son serving a mission. Not a sister missionary in sight, no recognition that women serve, too. Reminded me of the footnotes in historical records that say:… 500 men, 600 horses, 300 wagons and two women crossed the plains in a successful march… as if those two nameless women just went along for the ride.

#4 – I don’t believe for a second that Heavenly Father gives a flying fig about the details ESO brought up.
I think the age differences, etc. have nothing to do with higher, holy inspiration and more to do with old, outdated traditions that we are reluctant to change. In that way, Mormons have a lot in common with our Jewish friends. We do a lot of things for no reason other than it is a tradition.

I dunno… “bigger fish to fry”… I agree with your ideas in regard to changes that would be beneficial to both men and women in the mission field, but I am of the mind that any progression is still… progression. In a church where women’s dedication is questioned when wearing pants or anything labelled as “immodest” (even when “garment-worthy”)- in contrast to the non-issue of (male) plumber-butt and where men’s diversity in wearing a kilt or puipui is thought to be reflection of the international openness of the church, the women in pants argument is just as powerful as any other argument in regard to the progression of women. To diminish an issue of personal authority (choice of comfortable and modest dress) is no better than diminishing an issue of lack of authority positions open to women.

E–I hear you

Sally–I agree that sisters in leadership positions could provide good experiences for many.

LIZ–yeah. If it’s an elder’s world looking in, imagine what it feels like for sisters in there.

chris–I’d love to know if there are actual reasons for any of those policies. As it stands, I think I know all the reasons provided to the layity, but I am unconvinced that they are important or Godly. Certainly, if they were, I would not advocate for a change. My post does not in any way suggest that I have received revelation for the Church on these issues, I just think they are practices worthy of review.

MCQ–certainly, some changes would be unpopular with some. I am sure that can be said when the length of terms was changed for men from 18 months to 2 years. The first generation, the one who had expected to serve 18 months and were then faced with a longer service just had to adjust or lose out. But for everyone after, 24 months was the new normal. Women could make that change, too. I would actually be open to various terms of service: some may choose to serve a year (probably with no option for language training), or two, or three, if they like. But those choices should be up to the individual, not gender-determined. As long as the women are proscribed a shorter service, their service can be viewed as insignificant–like they are mini missionaries out for a joy ride in their cute little missionary tags. I feel similarly about age; while I think most missionaries improve with age, Ronan made a nice argument earlier this year about lowering the age for European missionaries since their schooling is less flexible than ours. Flexibility would help everyone, I just don’t want the time of service to be gender-based. Unlike you, I saw very little mission romance, and in my experience, it seems that some missions develop a culture where that is OK and others don’t. I think it is entirely dependent on the MP to set that tone. My mission had no romance. Maybe it was all those extra rules we had.

spunky–to me, everyone human on a mission cedes significant control over their warddrobe, not just women. I think there are legitimate reasons for that. I do not see legitimate reasons for the issues I listed in the post. I understand that lots of people feel otherwise, and thanks for including your ideas in this thread.

Ha! Oh I read it. Guess how it feels to read that at the very end of a very hard mission? If you’re a sister, it read like a big “scram–you’re not wanted here.” Can’t imagine how it read for the sisters in the MTC, or struggling in their first area, or those wrestling with the decision to go. It was hurtful. And truely, there are SO MANY other ways to communicate with Bishops and Stake Presidents when you are, in fact, the President of the Church!

My sisters who served after this were asked rather outrageous things during their pre-mission interviews. This is not my favorite talk.

Also, the age thing always bugs me. If they truely want to set an age at which few sisters would serve, it would be 30+. 21 is just not the end of a single woman’s life anymore. It’s like, they just want to crush your heart a little bit to communicate that you are not wanted, but they still want to enjoy the fruits of many women’s labors. Just so long as they know they aren’t wanted.

Sorry. Flashbacks.

ESO, you say your mission had no romance. Ok, I guess that’s possible but I hope you understand that, although I’m not doubting your word, I would suggest to you that you might not know everything that transpired in your mission. I didn’t know, and I probably wouldn’t have known if I had not been in the same district as one of the elders and later serving in a leadership position over one of the sisters. It was not widely known and was very hushed up. In one case the missionaries were simply transferred away from each other and a DL was released (it was discovered that the two were in love and were spending time together, though never alone). In another case two missionaries were sent home because they had been sneaking out and sleeping together. None of these things can be laid at the door of the MP not setting the proper tone. There was no culture of tolerance for these things in my mission, but they happened anyway, because people make choices.

ESO and Ceci: I guess I can see why sisters would have their feelings hurt by what President Hinckley said. It reads as a bit callous to me, though I don’t think I felt that way at the time. He did say: “I certainly do not wish to say or imply that their services are not wanted.” I’m sure he meant that, but I can see how sisters might interpret it as saying they are unwanted.

As for the quote from Elder Nelson, I’m not sure why that would be hurtful. Saying that the Lord is “profoundly grateful” for you does not sound hurtful to me. Can you explain why that would be hurtful to you?

We had what our Mission President called a “Super Sister,” who hung out in the mission office and was basically an AP for the sisters in our mission.

As far as romance goes, I knew two incidents where missionaries got married within a month or two after the last one got home. One pair eloped, and another one involved an AP and a Super Sister. Missionary romances are already bad, and I agree with MCQ that lowering the age for sisters would cause mission romances to skyrocket, at least without additional steps to segregate the Sisters from the Elders. Perhaps an all-Sister zone could resolve the problem?

My son’s best friend said of sister missionaries that there were no mediocr ones. They were either wonderful or majorly screwed up. I don’t have an opinion on that, but I’ve never forgotten it. I don’t mind them wearing dresses–I think it sets them apart. If they wore pants, care would have to be taken to make sure they look nice. Pants can look as frumpy or immodest as dresses depending.

I don’t know, I never thought about any of these issues. I guess having the girls go at 21 sends a message that they should marry before 21 and if they’re not married, then go on a mission because what do you have to lose? Like I said, I’m just throwing stuff out here.

There have been female missionaries for a long time in earth’s history……I guess I don’t really care when they go, what they wear, etc.

One thing I’ve wondered about is I read this book about a woman who was sexually assaulted in another country while serving in the Peace Corps. Granted, different institutions. But I guess that is one risk of female missionaries that never occurred to me before. I’m sort of traditional in most of my attitudes—door opening, etc.

It’s only giving the opening instead of the closing prayer that I get all militant about. Mostly.

“My son’s best friend said of sister missionaries that there were no mediocr ones. They were either wonderful or majorly screwed up.”

My experience exactly. But the wonderful ones were in the majority by a factor of about 10-1.

Yes, in my comment #18 I stated that there was sexual harassment. I have no idea what PC story you are talking about. In the stories that have been all over the press this year, to celebrate the 50th anniversary of PC, I have felt that, for the most part, former volunteers were blaming PC for the behavior of people who had no connection whatsoever with PC, and were simply citizens and residents of the country of service. I have a hard time holding PC accountable in such a situation. Also, I have known many volunteers who have just done downright stupid dangerous things and put themselves in very precarious situations. When things go bad, they often blame it on PC with some crap about PC not keeping them safe. If you want to be “kept safe” in another country, you need to sign up for the Foreign Service, not Peace Corps.

My mission was so small that transfers were difficult to manage. We would sometimes go for months without a single missionary moving and I only had a single transfer, serving my whole mission in just two areas. Had it it been coed, transfers would have been twice as complex.

My siblings on the other hand served in coed missions (one sibling met their spouse in the MTC though they “didn’t even date until after being home a LONG time!”). When we compare mission notes the differences are striking. Add that to my experience with multiple tours as a WML and I am of the opinion that missions shouldn’t be mixed at all. The boy/girl dynamic creates a whole other layer of problems that could simply be avoided by gender segregation.

“so where would women serve? Which missions do we get?”

*Which* missions is not important, just that they be designated either his or hers.

Regardless, some people won’t ever be happy, functioning from a position of injustice is as much a part of their personality as their liver is to their physical person. To accommodate the kick-against-the-prickers/professional malcontents is socially unhealthy, reinforces self-defeating behavior, and doesn’t resolve anything because protest was the original purpose, not resolution. To see what I mean read Walter Russell Meade’s (you will ike him ESO, he’s an Obama voter) latest essay on the OWP folks: http://blogs.the-american-interest.com/wrm/2011/10/18/the-vain-and-empty-rituals-of-protest-on-the-streets/

“Would there be women mission presidents?”

Some sisters would probably complain about not receiving enough attention from the priesthood.

How did this turn into an eye-rolling, ‘the women are complainin’ a-gain’ conversation?

I know more men who are complainers than women. One dolt had the chutzpah to give a sacrament meeting talk on Mother’s Day and he opened his remarks by saying that his wife was a jewel until she hit menopause. Now she is angry all the time and he wants his sweet, obedient wife back.
MAC- just because someone has a different perspective does not mean they are professional victims or social malcontents. They might have a valid point or it could possibly be hormones out-of-whack. Ya never now.

That’s an interesting distinction, Martin. I have, however, received a number of assignments. I always thought that had more to do with the personal style of the assigner than with me or the assignment.

Martin- I like your distinction. It makes sense in why things are presented the way they are.
I guess men need obligations in life. By nature, a Woman is in the army whether she wants to or not. Having kids does that to you.

bbell, in my experience, sisters do have cars “where feasible.” It’s where it’s not feasible that bikes, footwork and public transportation come in.

In my mission, nearly all sisters had cars, but the elders had cars only if they were zone leaders or APs. Interestingly, The sisters were not allowed to let the elders into their cars, so this resulted in elders “hitching” on the sisters cars by holding onto the car while riding their bikes. This is a great example of a stupid rule creating unintended and dangerous consequences. another example is that, once you got a car, you were also given mileage limits. These limits were imposed regardless of the fact that missionaries used their own money to pay for gas. They were also quite low and were not negotiable. Missionaries were expected to utilize their bikes if they hit their mileage limit befor the end of the month. This meant that, towards the end of the month, missionaries could often be seen driving to appointments in reverse. This didn’t take miles off the odometer, but miles driven in reverse were not added to the odometer, so it helped keep the missionaries within their mileage limits.

By the way, the sisters who were on bikes seemed to do just fine, though I’m sure they would have rather had a car. I think the suggestion that all sisters should have a car is needlessly paternalistic and condescending, though I recognize they have special challenges attempting to ride in a skirt.

The elders and sisters were responsible for their behavior, no question about it. My point is that a stupid and inflexible rule creates a climate where people will try to get around it without technically breaking it.

So many, many thoughts.

I’ll start with the age/President Hinckley comment.

Depending on how you read it, yeah, that can be hurtful. But I think he has a point. Waiting until later and not encouraging all sisters to go with the gusto young men are encouraged to serve does keep some sisters from going. Sisters who probably shouldn’t serve. Sisters who don’t really feel a desire to share the gospel or serve the Lord and decide to go simply because they don’t have anything else to do (higher education, marriage, job, etc lined up). We had at least one sister on my mission who fell into that category and while I’m sure she did do some good work in her 18 months, my impression was that as often as not she was a headache for our Mission President and her companions. She was difficult to get along with, got in major fights with companions, ran away from companions, etc. The Mission President did not encourage her to extend. As much as it hurts me to say it as a returned sister missionary myself, I feel like there is some truth in the ‘mediocre’ sister comment above. Missions are hard and some people are not equipped to deal with that. (This applies to plenty of young men as well, and maybe it’s just a matter of better preparing young men and young women.)

I also think having sisters serve at 21 is, in some part, a safety issue. Like 19-year-old young men, many 19-year-old young women are flaky, unaware, immature, and so on. Simply by virtue of their gender however, they would be at greater risk for sexual harassment and assault than their male counterparts. Women who are a little older, have a little more experience in dealing with the world/people most likely will make wiser decisions about where they go, who they talk to, how they behave (keep head up, walk with purpose, all the old self defense standards). I served a stateside, English speaking mission and while I never felt personally imperiled and know that my Mission President was extremely conscientious about which areas he had his sisters serve in, I did have a gun pulled on me. My Samaoan companion and I laughed about it and made a note in our area books to skip that house in the future; we also neglected to mention it to our third companion, who had a naturally a more nervous personality and had been standing in the back at that door.

I think the amount of time served is another reflection of the age sisters are serving at. It seems to me that it is easier to miss two years towards the start of a college experience than at the end when a hole in one’s resume or a certain lack in academic/working momentum would have greater effect on starting Masters and PhD programs, looking for jobs, etc. Maybe I’m wrong. I think the age difference comes in here as well. In my experience sisters, who start their missions a little more seasoned and, one hopes, a little wiser than many of their fellow Elders, and for the most part because it is less expected of them and in some circumstances harder for them to serve, come ready to buckle down and work. Maybe they learn a little faster, use their time a little better? I specifically remember my Mission President, who I had a great relationship with, telling me when I had to go home earlier than expected for medical reasons that in his opinion I had learned my lessons/gotten as much work done in the time I served as it takes some Elders to learn in their whole two years. Now I know he was trying to make me feel better about leaving, but that doesn’t mean there wasn’t *any* truth in it.

As for the leadership aspect, I wonder what exactly you mean by that? You want sisters leading out for/with other sisters? Or sisters with leadership over Elders? Simply by virtue of our significantly smaller numbers in my mission, I felt that Sisters did serve in leadership capacities within a senior/junior companionship and by serving with one another. For a time we had special “Sisters Conferences” in our mission (though these were slowly done away with when the latest Mission President’s handbook specifically stated they were not necessary) presided over by the Mission President’ wife and where each sister in the mission gave a short talk/lesson about some aspect of missionary work. The topics were taken from the sisters’ own suggestions. The meetings were fantastic, spiritual, and instructive not only because of the prepared remarks but because many of us served as a single sister’s companionship several zones away from any other sets of sisters. I also, at the end of my mission when we had 9 sisters and therefore not enough for even companionships, served as a traveling sister. We happened to have a very “young” (in terms of experience on the mission) set of sisters at the time and they’d been having a lot of problems with sisters feeling discouraged and getting depressed. So I traveled between areas and companionships for several weeks at a time helping make sure all the sisters knew all the rules, were doing well, realized you could have fun while serving, etc. Granted that ended when I broke my leg (on a bike) and had to go home for surgery.

Which, I suppose brings us to the bikes/cars debate. It is tricky to wear skirts on a bike, but it is manageable. I happen to know that in my mission my breaking my leg in what I still look at as a supremely silly and exasperating bike accident (most likely preventable on my part) led to all sisters in the mission getting cars/being put in areas which necessitated cars. It was as much a safety issue, I think, as the Mission President not wanting to lose any more of his very small number of sisters. (The greatest irony here may be that I was in a car area when I broke my leg on my bike. We had decided to take our bikes to a nearby appointment so we would have more opportunities to talk to people we saw along the way and in fact I broke my leg in our driveway just as we got home.)

I did know of at least a couple mission romances (though nothing that happened on the mission, as far as I was aware of–like ESO there were 8-14 sisters so you served with all of them or with companions of all of them). But I definitely felt more of a big sister dynamic in part because my younger brother served at the same time I did. So all the Elders, the great ones who were good leaders, teachers, etc and the ones that drove me crazy, all seemed to me like iterations of my brother. Besides I took the MTC lesson about keeping a little distance between you and the Elders (and members and investigators) at its word and would have done if I’d been 19 at the time. But that’s just who I am. Conversely I had a companion who flirted with the Elders/everyone all the time because she didn’t realize that was what she was doing. She also happened to marry one of the APs after they were both home . . .

When it comes down to it, I can see reasons for the rules as they are. But, perhaps more importantly, I trust that there are also reasons I can’t see/rationalize/explain beyond the fact that our church does function with a lay ministry and well-intentioned if at times imperfect mortal leadership.