Pedestals and Podiums ─ Utah Women, Religious Authority, and Equal Rights

Almost from the beginning, the women’s movement has been divided into two factions–those wanting full equality with men (Susan B. Anthony, Alice Paul) and those seeking legal protections for women’s particular needs (Julia Ward Howe, Eleanor Roosevelt). Early Utah leaders such as Relief Society President Emmeline B. Wells walked hand-in-hand with Anthony and other controversial reformers. However, by the 1970s, Mormons had undergone a significant ideological turn to the mainstream, championing women’s unique roles in home and church, and joined other conservatives in defeating the Equal Rights Amendment.

Martha Sonntag Bradley is a professor in the College of Architecture and Planning and director of the Honors Program at the University of Utah, where she has received the Distinguished Teaching Award, the Student Choice Award for Excellence in Teaching, the Bennion Center Service Learning Professorship, and the honorary title of “University Professor, 1999-2000.” She taught previously in the history department at Brigham Young University, where she received a Teaching Excellence Award. She has served as president of the Mormon History Association and co-editor of Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon Thought. Her many books include Kidnapped from that Land: The Government Raids on the Short Creek Polygamists; Four Zinas: A Story of Mothers and Daughters on the Mormon Frontier; and A History of Kane County.