In her essay “Dangerous History,” Jan Shipps argues persuasively that Ulrich’s invitation was blocked because of her feminist reputation. Ulrich herself holds no grudge, noting that BYU recently invited her to lecture. She feels the school, and the church that runs it, were trying to make amends. “There was a great effort at BYU to let me know, without saying so, that people were pretty embarrassed.
–Mark Oppenheimer (“Making Mormon history:
An influential religion struggles with how to tell the story of its past,” The Boston Globe, December 9 http://www.boston.com/bostonglobe/ideas/articles/2007/12/09/making_mormon_history/?page=1 )

The truth is that not even a ghost of the idea of calling crossed my mind as I listened. I’ve never called a radio program before. If you’re ever interviewed in a similar forum again, I’ll call in to offer my compliments.

I’m very pleased that you found your way to T&S, and honored that you commented here. Please feel welcome to do so again!

Laurel Thatcher Ulrich

I’d be happy to send you my bio of Elizabeth if you would like a copy. She served in the Utah legislature starting in 1915. Do you have access to my email address through comments?

Now I need to learn about Liz Hayward.

As I said, I have no problem with the descriptive claim that fewer women, good or bad, show up in history. But your Primary anecdote is silly because it is trying to compare RS presidents and prophets. What you want is to compare two groups with the only difference being gender, and then show that the males show up more in history. You could then estimate how much more they show up and label it the “male history premium”. Now that could be interesting.

To somebody, anyway. The topic does not do alot for me because I figure we’ll get the history we want. If we want more female history, we get it. I’m not a history fanatic so it’s all second-order to me.

Juanita Brooks – historian famous for Mountain Meadows Massacre and Lee biography; didn’t tend to toe the official history line

Martha Hughes Cannon – early Utah pre-19th amendment politician; didn’t she run against her husband and win?

Amy Brown Lyman – general RS president and I believe mother in law of organist Alexander Schreiner (?); her husband was an apostle for a while

LaVern Watts Parmley – sorry LaVern

Aurelia Spencer Rogers – started Primary organization for children; she has a delightful little biography

Patty Bartlett Sessions – didn’t she have something to do with medicine?

Barbara Bradshaw Smith – general RS president

Emma Hale Smith – general RS president; wife of Joseph Smith

Eliza R. Snow – general RS president, poetess; kind of like Elinore of Aquitaine in her relationships (sister to one prophet, wife to two; if she’d had children, they could have been rather formidable figures in Utah history themselves)

Belle Smith Spafford – general RS president

Elmina Shepherd Taylor – sorry Elmina

Emmeline B. Wells – major Utah suffragist; have her diaries ever been published? I remember reading through them in special collections at BYU while I was doing a paper on Elizabeth Pugsley Hayward (any takers on her identity? I’ll give you a hint: she introduced the 19th Amendment to the Utah Senate for ratification)

I notice that the only two I’m drawing a total blank on are the ones with the Utah Mormon names: LaVern and Elmina. I hope I haven’t misidentified anyone, if so, I apologize profusely to their descendants.

It includes bios of twice as many men (half of whom were church presidents).

I wonder how many readers recognize the names of how many of these women?

But it’s not only prophets, is it? As I said earlier, you can easily “Expand it to “people from the early church”, or “people from the Book of Mormon”, or “people from Ancient Rome.” The men outnumber the women.

There are a _total_ of six named women in the Book of Mormon, and three of those are Bible women who are mentioned in the BoM. Just _one_ Book of Mormon woman (Sariah) gets any sort of extended discussion. There are several (non-prophet) men who are named and discussed, people like Teancum, Sam, or Pahoran.

Want to exclude prophets from the “people in the early church” discussion? Sure. We’ve still got broad knowledge of figures like Oliver Cowdery, Sidney Rigdon, Martin Harris, eight witnesses, Porter Rockwell, and on and on.

Well-behaved women _do_ make history at a rate substantially less frequently than well-behaved men. (My prophets example was intended to demonstrate that, and was a reply to Matt’s suggestion that there is essentially no disparity between male and female historical seldomness.)

One can suggest various reasons for that fact, invidious or innocuous or both. One could suggest that portions of the disparity (or even the entire disparity) is due to God’s will. But as a descriptive matter, the statement seems to be absolutely true.