I recently got the opportunity to watch our new semi-annual General Women's Meeting with women, young women and girls eight and up at my Church. It was a really wonderful experience, and I love the feeling of community and sisterhood that I get when I'm together with these amazing women and youth. It also reminds me that I stand as an example of womanhood to the girls in my sphere of influence.
In "The Family: A Proclamation to the World", it states that "all human beings—male and female—are created in the image of God. Each is a beloved spirit son or daughter of heavenly parents, and, as such, each has a divine nature and destiny. Gender is an essential characteristic of individual premortal, mortal, and eternal identity and purpose."
As Latter-day Saints, we believe that whether we are male or female has more than just social or biological significance. Our gender is "an essential characteristic" of everything we were, are, and will be. Our feminine attributes are divine.
Historically, women have been mistreated (and that's putting it mildly). In recent years, we have made leaps and bounds towards equality, at least in the developed world. Culturally, however, our society still struggles to given men and women equal treatment. Women are often faced with cultural double standards. Our intelligence and value is diminished by stereotypes enforced by marketing and media images.
How do we, as a collective gender, respond to these affronts to our character?
Sometimes, I am dismayed by what I see as the "masculinization" of women by the very movement that purports to be empowering us. Rather than encouraging a male oriented society to become more accommodating to women, we ask women to become more like men. Rather than empowering women by celebrating the divine attributes that make us female, we label these attributes as "weak" and encourage women to develop masculine attributes so they can be stronger.
I, for one, wish to celebrate the "divine feminine": the truly amazing attributes that we, as women, innately possess.
I need to preface this by saying that I am what my husband calls "the exception to every rule". I did the majority of construction work on our chicken coop, including laying the concrete foundation, siding it and roofing it. I change the oil and the spark plugs on our outdoor equipment. When the washing machine stopped working, I was the one who dissected it to find the problem. I've been to the hardware store so many times they know me (and my kids). When my husband asked what I wanted for Christmas, my response was a Sawzall.
I am not afraid of dirt. I am not afraid of hard work.
I am a woman. And I wish to celebrate the aspects that make me a woman, a true woman, not as the world sees me but as God sees me.
A woman is beautiful, inside and out. Not because of what she wears or what dress size she is or how her body is shaped. She is beautiful because she is created in the image of the Divine, and her nature and privilege extends far beyond the sphere of mortality, into eternities yet to come.
A woman is a nurturer. It is not weakness to nurture. Nurturing those around us, in whatever way we do it, requires strength. It requires resilience. It requires a steady heart and a strong spirit.
A woman is strong. Not harsh. Not cold. Not callous. She is a backbone for the downtrodden. Women "succor the weak, lift up the hands which hang down, and strengthen the feeble knees" (D&C 81:5). Most of all, she leans on the arm of God to be her backbone in all things.
A woman is powerful, not because of the power and prestige given by the world, but because of the power that lies in her to influence the world for good. Elder D. Todd Christofferson said in his talk "The Moral Force of Women" that "[w]omen bring with them into the world a certain virtue, a divine gift that makes them adept at instilling such qualities as faith, courage, empathy,and refinement in relationships and in cultures."
A woman is gentle. Sister Margaret D. Nadauld put it best when she said, "The world has enough women who are tough; we need women who are tender. There are enough women who are coarse; we need women who are kind. There are enough women who are rude; we need women who are refined. We have enough women of fame and fortune; we need more women of faith. We have enough greed; we need more goodness. We have enough vanity; we need more virtue. We have enough popularity; we need more purity." Gentleness is not weakness, it is not submissiveness. It is humility and kindness in action.
Most of all, a woman is a daughter of God. She is capable, strong and powerful. She is beautiful and nurturing. She is gentle and kind. She is glorious and amazing, not for the attributes that the world gives her, or the values that society places on her, but because of her innate heritage and her divine potential.
I hope that we all stop trying to bring women down, to make them cold and callous, harsh and unfeeling. Perhaps those characteristics will allow them to survive in a cruel world, but as Eep from the movie "The Croods" famously put it, that isn't living, that's only not dying.
The Lord has called us to live in this world: to repair it, improve it, and shape it into a place fit for the children of God.
