Quote:
Originally Posted by MikeWaters
More--
In my work, obviously, many of my colleagues are highly educated professional women. Some are my equals. Some are my superiors, etc. Just like you would expect.
But then contrast this with my ward--many professional men. Zero professional women (that I am aware of). Zero. Even the professional men are not married to professional women.
Obviously, it is the choice of women in this cultural group (Mormons) not to pursue professional careers (for the most part).
This is what I worry about: do we, as a church, lose the women who choose to become professionals? i.e. are they now inactive, gone? And if so, is that a good thing? Is their a way to keep them?
My brother-in-law works in DC. He is single. He says he is not attracted to most of the LDS women there. Why? Basically because they are aggressive professionals.
If LDS men won't marry LDS professional women, then what is to become of these women, in terms of staying in the church?
If you do a survey of the professionals here, you will likely see they are married to non-professionals (including myself). This isn't any kind of value judgment against them--I don't wish my wife was a professional. But I have to ask myself, did I avoid such women?
How many women marry in college and IMMEDIATELY give up their aspirations so their husband can finsih college faster or some-such?
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Who
doesn't want a SAHM back at the home? I wish I had one.
My ward does have a few professional women, some single and some married. More fit into the category of women who either didn't even finish school (stopped to leave to the husband's professional school) or who didn't really work.
I took some time a couple of years back to try to help a woman who was a new BYU law grad. She had finished her degree and elected to take the next 9 months off to go on her husband's rotation (he's military med school). She never took a bar and didn't seem too worried about it. I told her how important it was to look for work NOW because the longer she waited, the harder it would be to get on the ladder. She never did get a job, and now she has a baby, and I wonder if she'll ever practice law. Not that she has to, but what's the point of going to law school if you don't want to use the degree. Strikes me as a poor investment.
Which reminds me that I have several times been asked whether I went to law school "for fun" (as in, for education's sake, I suppose). Again, that's a very odd comment to me.
But you really can't openly pursue a career as a woman in the LDS church. You just can't. It doesn't fit the doctrinal message. It's not your role. No, it's not forbidden, but it's not the way it's "supposed" to be.