Posted by:
axeldc
(
)
Date: October 08, 2012 08:40AM
I think that Monson just inadvertently created a new Mormon feminism. They will never come out and grant women equal rights in the church, but they may have given women two tools to grab it in the next decades.
1) Lowering the age for women to serve will bring more women into the mission field. This was intentional, as the number of guys serving is falling. The church needs to fill its shrinking missionary ranks, so do like Uncle Sam and put Rosie the missionary in his place. I'll wager that they lower it to 18 if they get more women going to replace the men who aren't going.
This will create a lot more female RMs, putting them on more even footing with the men who have served missions. It also reduces the "Sister Missionary" stigma of only going if you can't get married, since no one expects 19 yo to be married any more.
2) I think that sending young men out straight from HS, instead of giving them a year of college first, will reduce the number of RMs who graduate from college. It will be harder for them to get into college after 2 years of no schooling, and then harder for them to adjust to college with a 2 year lapse from HS. Since women already earn 57% of BAs, this puts another impediment for men to getting degrees, lowering their earning potential and making them more reliant on women to finance the family.
With more female RMs and a growing proportion of women graduating from college relative to men, the future leaders of the LDS Church are the women. Not the nice little housewives who cook, sew and change diapers, future LDS women will be the professionals fluent in a 2nd language who can talk in RS about "what I did on my mission" without people thinking she was just an old maid when she went.