Citation

Vance L. Sociol. Relig. 2002; 63(1): 91-112.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2002, Association for the Sociology of Religion)

DOI

10.2307/3712541

PMID

unavailable

Abstract

An important locus for mediation of a religious movement's self-definition and relationship with secular society is found in its definition of gender roles, especially in definition of ideal roles for women. Content analysis of Mormon periodicals reveals tension between accommodation and resistance to secular gender norms with a shift from advocation of women's participation in extra-domestic activities in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries to insistence upon women's primary, even exclusive, obligations as wives, mothers and homemakers in the 1970s and advocation of inconsistent ideals in the 1980s and 1990s. Findings are discussed with reference to Mormonism's changing response to its sociocultural environment.