This morning Michael Austin posted his analysis of the percentage of faculty, administration, and staff at BYU, BYU-Idaho, and BYU-Hawaii over at BCC. It seems that nationwide the average number of faculty is around 40%, but BYU languishes behind at around 20%, BYU-H at about 15%, and BYU-I at around 11%. He went on to compare our numbers to other similarly conservative christian institutions with similar teachings on gender roles. (It’s a good post, go read it). What is instructive is that it isn’t specifically our belief that women should be in the home that feed into these numbers, because he shows how we hire women in droves to fill our support staff positions (which are less flexible and family friendly than faculty positions). Since I’ve worked full-time as support staff in the administration building at BYUI, I thought I’d share one experience I had that helps to explain the disparity.
I began at Ricks College as a student in the late 90s. I had a 32 on my ACT score and a 3.9 GPA and would have been able to get into my pick of schools, including BYU. My test scores earned me recruitment material from Tulane and the University of Chicago, and I would have brief daydreams of what my life would be if I chose to attend there. Those daydreams were set aside promptly, though, because I’d internalized my only purpose in life was to be a Mother in Ziontm and education was (at most) just a back-up plan in case my husband died. I chose Ricks College and enrolled with a major in Office Systems Management (a perfect back-up!). As a student in office systems management I took many classes with business majors and watched many of the OSM students (all female) have most of the top scores. As part of our degree we were placed as student secretaries in campus departments. I was hired in Public Relations as a student. After graduation a secretarial position opened up in the Executive Office. I applied and interviewed with the whole RC President’s Council as well as all of their secretaries. I was hired and worked there for almost two years.
I was fully orthodox and traditional in belief and practice at the time. When our area president Elder C. Scott Grow gave a devotional and talked about how grateful he was to have his wife bless their family by choosing to keep the commandment of being a stay-at-home mother, there were many women working full-time in the admin building who turned off their radios and shut their office doors so they wouldn’t have to listen to the rest of the devotional. I was shocked. My personal response to them was more along the lines of “the guilty taketh the truth to be hard.” So you can see why I didn’t have any personal issues or objections to the instructions I received during faculty interviews.
As part of my position I welcomed interviewing faculty to the office and was in charge of preparing a folder for each candidate that had their resume, a printed out picture I was to take when they arrived, and an area to take notes. I delivered each portfolio to the President’s Council members before the interviewees were called back. I had been instructed that when a male faculty interviewee came, I was to take their picture from the shoulders up. When the interviewee was female, I was to step back and take a picture from head to toe so the President’s Council could remember how the woman was dressed. I was told that if a woman arrived to interview for faculty wearing pants their portfolio would go immediately in the trash as soon as they left. People hiring were making sure only a certain kind of woman was allowed to work at BYU-Idaho (not the pants-wearing-to-interview kind).
This is just one example of some of the cultural dynamics that are playing into these numbers. There are a lot of layers of issues; from how we discourage women from pursuing education for education’s sake, to how they’re sometimes pressured into “easier” fields that don’t match their interests because they’d be family friendly (not always bad counsel, but it would be nice to encourage women to follow and develop their talents, interests in STEM, etc.), to how we can’t seem to develop a narrative that you can be a good mother AND _________. There is a lot going on here. Women who are in these positions also experience awful treatment and discrimination that could easily be reported to law enforcement. I’ve heard stories that would make your face melt off, but those are not my stories to share.
I also understand that these issues are not unique to LDS schools, gender imbalances exist in hiring practices due to discrimination AND choices of women (speaking as a stay-at-home-mother who is off-tracking during my kids’ younger years and currently planning on completing an MA around the time they graduate). I think the strength of Michael Austin’s thesis is that even amongst other conservative christian institutions who preach gender roles, we lag far behind.
P.S. this experience is one of the reasons wearing pants to church (in Rexburg) has become symbolically so meaningful to me.
P.P.S. for a more in depth treatment of these dynamics and treatment of female students and employees at BYU-Idaho, I invite you to read “Supporting our Women Students and Faculty” by a current female faculty member at BYUI published 2009 in their faculty journal.
Wheat & Tares 
Did they realize the EEOC violation in the approach?
I don’t know. I think they felt pretty assured that doing so was covered by their Title IX exemption?
To clarify, yes, the BYUs have obtained an exemption that allows them to discriminate against women in their hiring process. From my comment on Michael Austin’s BCC post today:
The link Michael included that shows the religious exemption BYU requested and obtained is very telling. Merrill Bateman authored the request which includes the following justification for discriminating against women who apply which he bases on the Proclamation on the Family: “Please note the significant emphasis on the importance of family and the differing roles of men and women in the family. It is for this reason that the University may from time to time make a pre-employment inquiry as to the marital and family status of an applicant for a teaching position at the University. The Church teaches and we believe that such information about marital and family status is relevant, combined with other factors, in assessing the extent of an applicant’s religious conviction and commitment to Church doctrine and practice as we attempt to identify those most qualified to teach at BYU. Naturally, questions about religious conviction will be wide-ranging and will include areas of inquiry about the support of Church leaders, morality, family life, and basic Church doctrine. The result of this broad inquiry will be that the University will have a better view as to whether the applicant has the necessary religious conviction and devotion to teach at BYU.”
This is why female applicants are asked intrusive and demeaning questions in the interview process that reveal the true feelings these decision makers have about them: that they are inherently suspect simply for being a woman seeking gainful employment. They are then grilled and required to justify why they are not at home supporting their husband by being financially dependent on him. For a married woman with kids to choose to work apparently means that she is not committed to the church and that she is unfit to work at BYU.
Nuts to that. I’d appreciate a refund of the large quantities of tithing I’ve paid to the church on my supposedly ill-gotten gains over the last 3 decades. Frankly, as a BYU grad and working mother, I’d like an apology. This letter is an insult to every woman in this church who works to support her family. It’s an economic reality that most households require two incomes, but even if they did not, I guess we need to remember that “men are that they might have joy” is one of those scriptures that deliberately excludes women. The founding fathers likewise didn’t include women when they said the pursuit of happiness was an unalienable right.
Nobody should have thumbscrews put to them to justify why they work to earn a living or have it be assumed that not being financially dependent on a spouse means that they are not committed to the gospel. I find this morally reprehensible. There’s a reason these laws exist to protect women from discrimination. Skirting the law with an exemption that claims women who work are automatically suspected of being faithless is repulsive.
hawkgrrl’s response about sums it up for me: sickening and infuriating
Reminds me of a conversation I had with a very bright and competent female R&D technician in her 50’s. We chatted about our careers and education. She attended BYU and her degree was “BA in home finance”. I thought she was pulling my leg, but she said “things were different back then”. Well, it seems things weren’t all that different, based on this post and linked article. BYU still denies women their full potential as human beings.
This is both immoral and unethical. I’d love to know the history and legality of how they achieved this exemption (any attorneys on here?). I work in higher ed at a non-religious institution and I can tell you we’d be both publicly excoriated and sued so fast it would make our head swim if we were to ask our female-identifying candidates what BYU appears to ask them. The most appalling thing about this is that it’s an egregious example of “well, our policy allows it, so it must be right,” similar to some of the thinking regarding the honor code. It’s sickening that BYU relies on both flawed reasoning and a healthy dose of moral cowardice to continue this practice. Disgraceful.
The pants policy isn’t covered by the letter.
So women are subjected to an extra test (Are they wearing a skirt at time of interview?), that they cannot prepare for because it is conducted without their knowledge, and this test can completely exclude them from being hired, and no such test applies to male applicants, so qualified female applicants are dropped at time of interview for failing the test they didn’t know they participated in, while all male applicants remain in the pool to be considered on their own merits.
And even if they happen to wear a skirt that day and avoid failing this test no one told them about, during the interview, they are subjected to an interrogation about whether they believe that women should be full-time homemakers–an interrogation they can’t possibly win because their presence at the interview is pretty good proof that they support the right of women to participate in the workforce.
So the question becomes, after such treatment, why would a women even accept a job at such a sexist institution, if they were fortunate enough to have any other offers? It sounds like the recruitment process itself is designed around encouraging women to look elsewhere.
Kristine, this is a great post that makes real things that I could only say theoretically. You have been in the trenches. I just spent a few minutes querying a database. Thanks!
I wonder if there’s discrimination against other categories, and, if so, whether BYU can argue that the exemption covers these categories: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Protected_class
For example, suppose BYU employs fewer people of color than their hiring pool demographics would suggest. I doubt a policy of screening non-white applicants based on photographs would fall under the “sincerity of belief” argument in their exemption.
I am amazed there’s been no lawsuit.
Loved (or should I say hated) the post, Kristine. Thanks for the insider perspective.
Thanks for this peek at reality, Kristine. Sunlight is curative.
Thank you for this post. It was sad and broke my heart to read it but I always appreciate the truth.
Ironic, this.
http://www.byu.edu/hr/?q=directory/eeo/discrimination
I notice the website says to submit reports to BYU’s EO manager. Talk about the fox guarding the henhouse.
The right place to report is
https://www.eeoc.gov/employees/charge.cfm
I was recently hired at LDS Business College for a position in administration. As a Utah transplant who has had a hard time adjusting, I was a bit apprehensive when I pursued the position about if I would be treated differently because I was a woman. I specifically wore pants to my interview because it was important to me that if they hired me they would know I would wear pants to work. I’m grateful that the sort of things I worried about haven’t materialized. , I am typically one of two women in meetings; however, I do feel listened to, respected, and accepted.
Thanks for sharing this, Kristine. This is infuriating that even on top of all our formalized institutional sexism in the Church (and its schools), we have individual men in positions of power who get to push all their additional idiosyncratic sexist ideas as a bonus. I might be catastrophizing, but I worry that a Church that is serious about the divine gender role baloney in the Family Proclamation can never solve a problem like this. Because, when it comes down to it, they don’t *want* a gender-balanced faculty. They want women to be at home.
Here is the complete text of the devotional referenced above. For what it’s worth he never said it was a “commandment.” Read the entire talk in it’s context. Also, as to the “pants” requirement… that may have been the dress code 15 years ago (which should not have been a surprise to anyone applying to BYUI and should certainly be expected to be followed if you wanted to work there) but I know from personal experience this is no longer the case, so I’m not sure how this experience is really relevant. I’d much rather discuss CURRENT policies and procedures to bring about positive change.
http://emp.byui.edu/ANDERSONKC/431readings_files/readings/Rel431ReadingFile.W2003/Prioities.Scott%20Grow,%20January%2029,%202002.htm
Shannon: You do know they can edit the text of their talks before they’re posted? and that it’s a common practice? I know, because I often assisted with the process in the EO.
I remember him referencing it being a commandment because after it was over a number of people had a discussion in the lobby of the office re: the accuracy of the word and how the whole institution would come to a grinding halt without the working mothers on the support staff.
I agree that current policies are more applicable, but hiring practices from 15 years ago certainly play into the percentages in Austin’s report. And they certainly play into the current culture and traditions and attitudes existing at BYU-Idaho.
FWIW I do know that HR has recently in the last few years been going around to different departments on campus trying to break old habits and train them out of asking illegal questions during interviews. I’m not sure if the training has filtered up to PC / GAs who hire faculty.
Also, wearing a skirt was NOT a part of the faculty dress code at BYUI. I had that dress code as a woman working in the admin building, but female faculty could and would wear pants. In fact it made quite the gossip when one was heard to have worn capris during the summer session (gasp!) which *was* against dress code.
Studying my major at BYU Provo as a woman was a miserable experience. Women were few in the major and we were treated poorly. It got a little better when I explained to the director of the program that my tuition dollars were just as green as anyone else’s and I had paid for equal access to an education.
Looking back, I am appalled that such a conversation was even necessary.
One of my daughter attended BYU Provo recently and had a similar experience in a hard science program.
My next daughter will NOT attend BYU. She needs an education, role models, and opportunities that will further her career. That isn’t available in the hard sciences at BYU for women.
You think this is bad try being a male nurse.
If it was edited than that would be a GOOD thing as it would reinforce the idea being a SAHM is NOT a commandment. He may have misspoke (like we all do sometimes) and if so the edit was needed so as not to perpetuate the false doctrine that the only way to fulfill your primary role as a wife & mother is to stay home. That is the point of clarification I wanted to make.
Shannon have you read any of the words of the prophets re the role of women pre-1990? The whole page in teachings of the living prophets on women was a whole page of telling women to be mothers and the dangers of working.
This discussion is on the evolving rhetoric of our leaders and the long-term effects.
All my youth and child-bearing years our leaders taught women to be SAHMs. Always. Even Pres. Benson later called the women of the church to leave the cash registers and other such paraphernalia that comprised the female work force. I even remember when it was a given that a working woman could not be in a leadership position at church.
It’s a catch-22….. The church places only those who fit a very precise and acceptable lifestyle in leadership positions, who then fill the echo chamber of like mindedness, which creates a cacophony of assurance that their ways are THE ways to live. Truly they mean well. But echo chambers drown out other voices; some still, some small….
I’m appalled at what has gone on regarding the employment of women at church schools. It’s beyond disgusting. The echo chamber Is long overdue for a good tonic. Oh glory…………
It’s not just BYU. I have a friend (female) who graduated from Roseman dental school in South Jordan, UT. She’s a minority and not LDS. First, any non-LDS faculty were bullied into leaving the school…most are LDS. Male students bully female students and treat them like “assistants”. LDS students get most of the best patients in the clinics. Non-LDS students excluded from study groups. And so forth. I asked why she didn’t file a complaint. She said, I was afraid of retaliation and I just wanted to get my degree and move on.
(continued)
This student had a BS Dental Hygiene from a 4 year school. She said her undergrad curriculum was much more stringent than her DDS. The LDS students would whine if they didn’t pass, and the professors let them get away with it. She said all the students were incredibly spoiled and “entitled”. Despite the fact it wasn’t an LDS school like BYU, students formed LDS organizations and made sure they dominated student government. LDS students never had non-LDS students at social events. The excuse was somebody might serve *alcohol*… gasp! She said she was so glad to get away and move out of Utah.
I’ve a lot of I really appreciate the comments even if I have little to add.
@Ronkonkoma. As a male RN, you have increased opportunities for leadership roles within every organization you are involved in. The expectation is that you will go into a specialized area quickly. There are people who will help that happen quicker, in part, because of your gender. Greater US society does not always understand how a RN differs from a medical assistant so I am sure you have had your share of obnoxious comments. The medical community is aware of what a competent RN can do and the profession is aware that adding men will increase the earning potential and respect of all nurses.
You have so much privilege within your chosen profession and still have obnoxious comments. Men don’t usually get the obnoxious comments, so I imagine it is annoying.
But .. I doubt your basic competence is ever questioned because of your gender. No one is attempting to fondle you at work, no one has ever commented about how well you fill out your scrubs, and no one has ever asked you, “who watches your children while you work.”
Kristine,
When I hear stories like yours I think about the conversation that led to that practice. How many people were in on the discussion? Why was it brought up? What, exactly, did wearing pants instead of a skirt mean to the decision makers. Were a couple of sexist jokes made as well? How did the likely female secretary feel while taking the meeting notes?
Shannon,
Go read the *current* institute manual for the marriage and family class. Find the section on “women and work”. There is one. Read the quotations provided. Then come back and report. This is the official college level manual used for teaching our college aged women. Please tell us how we are supposed to interpret that in this context.
Rah,
Actually, I have read the “current” manual along with numerous talks & counsel from past decades. The NEW updated manual (publication date 2016) is MUCH better so please take time to study it and share it with others. All institutes and church school religion departments are currently in the process of of using either this NEW manual or developing their own more relevant/timely course material. (I actually teach one such class) I wish they would just take the old one down (you actually have to access it in the archived section on the institute site). I’m very encouraged that much progress has been made. Hopefully, the rising generation will of youth and college aged women will gain a better understanding of these eternal principles and be able to look for personal revelation on how best to proceed with their lives. https://www.lds.org/manual/the-eternal-family-student-readings/student-readings?lang=eng&_r=1
And the teacher’s manual: https://www.lds.org/manual/the-eternal-family-teacher-manual?lang
=eng
@Shannon
“how to best proceed with their lives”
I hope not. I read sections 9 & 10 on the responsibilities of men and women, respectively in the links you provided. If this is the new and improved version, I don’t want to think how sexist and demeaning the earlier version was. Really?Mormons seriously teach these arcane 1950’s attitudes to young men and women? If you can’t see what’s wrong with this, then you are so steeped in the culture that you’ve lost perspective. After reading this, the situation at BYU doesn’t surprise me at all.
Shannon,
Here is what I was referring to. From the current Preparing for Eternal Marriage Institute Manual Religion 234, 235. This is the class you take often when you get engaged as places like the Ys. Current manual. Available by PDF at LDS.org.
In the section explicitly titled “Mother’s Employment Outside the Home”.
https://www.lds.org/manual/eternal-marriage-student-manual/mothers-employment-outside-the-home?lang=eng
It starts with this:
“The husband is expected to support his family and only in an emergency should a wife secure outside employment. Her place is in the home, to build the home into a heaven of delight.
“Numerous divorces can be traced directly to the day when the wife left the home and went out into the world into employment. Two incomes raise the standard of living beyond its norm. Two spouses working prevent the complete and proper home life, break into the family prayers, create an independence which is not cooperative, causes distortion, limits the family and frustrates the children already born. …
“… I beg of you, you who could and should be bearing and rearing a family: Wives, come home from the typewriter, the laundry, the nursing, come home from the factory, the café.
“No career approaches in importance that of wife, homemaker, mother—cooking meals, washing dishes, making beds for one’s precious husband and children.
“Come home, wives, to your husbands. Make home a heaven for them. Come home wives, to your children, born and unborn. Wrap the motherly cloak about you and unembarrassed help in a major role to create the bodies for the immortal souls who anxiously wait.
“When you have fully complemented your husband in home life and borne the children, growing up full of faith, integrity, responsibility and goodness, then you have achieved your accomplishments supreme, without peer, and you will be the envy through time and eternity” (fireside address in San Antonio, Texas, 27, 32–33).
“How do you feel the Lord looks upon those who would trade flesh-and-blood children for pianos or television or furniture or an automobile, and is this not actually the case when people will buy these luxuries and yet cannot afford to have their children?” (Teachings of Spencer W. Kimball, 329).
You tell me how a married women with kids with a PhD and a professorship fits into this at all except as someone doing something “less worthy”.
Things may be changing but ever so slowly and with only minimal effort. Some manuals may be better but this is still the explicit instruction being given to newly married women at church schools and institute.
No one we have administrators of BYU on record saying “I am so glad there aren’t many LDS women with PhDs. They have something better to do with their time.” That is a current administrator. Today.
Oh and I love the “creates an independence which is not cooperative, causes distortion and limits the family”. Sorry this is NOT what I want my daughter taught as if it is coming for God. Never.
My version:
Wives, come home from the biotech company, the law firm, the neonatal unit, come home from the fortune 500 company, the IT job. No career approaches in importance that of wife, homemaker, mother—cooking meals, washing dishes, making beds for one’s precious husband and children.
(Personally, I’d argue the work that intelligent, educated women do in many, many fields can have huge impacts on their communities and the world. And doing so doesn’t have to be a negative on a marriage or children. The rest of these truly important things (cooking meals, washing dishes, making beds) are easy to hire out or split duties with a spouse.)
Amateur parent
Your comment doesn’t take away the fact that in nursing there is still a good old girls networt. No one complains the dental hygenists are overwhelmingly female. In today’s society men especially white men are just considered fair game.
Unfortunately, we reap what we sow.
The Influence of Religion and Values on a Young
Woman’s College Decision
Some findings from the study…
LDS participants generally believe that learning, knowledge, and higher education are important. They believe their religion supports women
attending college, but many do not feel they need to graduate.
Many LDS women cannot envision a life of integration. They cannot imagine being simultaneously married, having children, and continuing college
(even one class at a time). Some believe that women need to “give up” or “sacrifice” college for their husbands/families. Several participants said it was their “duty” to drop out of school.
In the minds of many LDS participants, “going to college”gets lumped into the same category as “going to work.” If they believe they should not
work, they also believe they should not attend college.
Marriage or the birth of the first child is the end of college for many young women.
As rah pointed out, the decades of fear-mongering about women choosing something in addition to motherhood/wifehood has taken its toll.
The information on this website should be integrated into the youth curriculum. Real stories of real women succeeding in situations they did not anticipate. If only the New Era and Ensign ran stories like this…
Why I’m So Glad I’m A Scientist And A Mom
@RonKonKoma: I am thrilled to hear that there is still “a old girls network” within nursing. That is wrong of me, but I am thrilled.
As a woman, I run into “Old Boys Clubs” all the time. It is a endemic in the LDS church, in universities, in politics, and in the leadership of most corporations.
Until a man comes across “The Old Girls Club”, many men are unable to see women’s complaints about The Glass Ceiling or Gender Inequality as significant or real. They diminish women’s complaints as being groundless. Just “women creating drama”.
Experiencing gender-bias that decreases your opportunities for advancement is something EVERY woman deals with. Every day. It is wrong. It is just as wrong to decrease a man’s opportunities due to gender. Not more wrong — the same amount of wrong as it is to decrease a woman’s opportunities due to gender.
White men are not “Fair Game” in society or in the healthcare industry. The playing field is gradually leveling out. It used to be that when a white man, a white woman, and any sort of ethnic or either gender applied for the same job with equivalent credentials, the white man was picked first. Every white man expected that outcome. Now, that same white man has to actually compete for the position. With equal credentials, HR might very well just put all the names in a hat and randomly pick one. That is a new and uncomfortable reality for white men.
Hmmm .. The game is now more fair for everyone.
Let’s call that “Fair Game”.
My musical daughter composed parodies of the primary songs. This one got her kicked out of primary.
I hope they take me to the temple,
When I have grown a foot or two.
I hope by then I will be ready.
To cook and clean and sew ,*
Like Mormon housewives do.
Might have added a “cr” after the “s” in sew while giggling exceedingly.
I think too many of our youth get it, they really don’t care, and then really can’t take Mormonism seriously.
Kinda late in the game.