How Quaker Women Made Decisions
“Quaker women in history have a reputation for being bolder and more publicly visible than their contemporaries, being involved with preaching and publishing from the very beginning of the movement. Until the end of the 19th century, however, the members of the main Quaker decision-making groups were men. Female Friends were considered spiritually equal, but there was vocal opposition to giving them any earthly authority.
The view that women could speak on religious matters, travel to preach and publish their thoughts was revolutionary in the 17th century when, in some circles, it was taught that women had no souls. It became a defining characteristic of the Society of Friends and intensified their persecution, as permitting women to behave in this unconventional way was a very visible difference [from mainstream society].
[In 1666] George Fox set out his administrative system for the Society of Friends. Local worshipping groups would send representatives to a Monthly Meeting to handle matters of finance, discipline and membership. Monthly Meetings would send representatives to a Quarterly Meeting, who would in turn send them to London Yearly Meeting, ensuring the Society as a whole was going in the same direction. Women were not usually included in these Meetings, leading to a separate system of Women’s Meetings being developed.
It is generally thought that George Fox had the idea for Women’s Meetings – he certainly promoted them – but evidence suggests that Margaret Fell was central to their establishment. Women’s Meetings were administrative meetings that paralleled, and were subordinate to, the Monthly and Quarterly Meetings. They enabled women to participate in practical decision making without being talked over by men. They had responsibility for areas traditionally associated with women: charity work in their local area, the moral behaviour of other women and marriages.
Women were finally given permission to hold their own Yearly Meeting in 1784, when a group of nine women, led by Esther Tuke took another proposal to London Yearly Meeting. It was, however, stressed that ‘such a Meeting is not to be so far considered a Meeting of Discipline as to make rules.’
[…] Women’s Meetings actually ended up doing very little. Men’s Meetings continued to make all the decisions, including in areas for which the Women’s Meetings allegedly had responsibility. Many Quaker women viewed the work of Women’s Meetings as ‘make-work’ and chose to invest their time in anti-slavery, temperance or other humanitarian causes instead.
In 1873 there was a conference held to discuss the state of the Society of Friends. Women were not permitted to attend, a situation which stirred up many heated letters in The Friend, discussing women’s ineligibility for service on Meeting for Sufferings (the Quaker executive body), the fettered nature of Women’s Meetings and correlating the topic with the wider issue of women’s suffrage.
Despite this, and two minutes from Bristol and Somerset Quarterly Meeting in 1884 and 1895, it wasn’t until 1896 that London Yearly Meeting officially recognised women as equal to men and declared them to be eligible to serve on Meeting for Sufferings.50 of the 87 new members of Meeting for Sufferings in 1898 were women. One of these women, Anna Littleboy, is quoted as saying “while kindly and courteously received, it was evident that the presence of women was not exactly welcomed by most of the older members, and the clerk impressed upon them that the meeting was for the conduct of business and not for speeches.”
— Library of the Society of Friends, 2019
Reader Responses
What gifts have your spiritual foremothers given you?
What lessons from Quaker “herstory” resonate with you?
I was deeply moved by the revelations in the book, “Sisters in Spirit,” [by Sally Roesch Wagner] that the women of the Haudenosaunee confederation (Iroquois) contributed to the revolutionary vision of early feminists by providing a model of freedom at a time when American women experienced few rights. Women of the Six Nations Confederacy possessed decisive political power, control of their bodies, control of their own property, custody of their children, the power to initiate divorce, satisfying work and a society generally free of rape and domestic violence.
[The book] recounts the struggle for freedom and equality waged by early American Quaker women, documenting how Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Lucretia Mott, and others were influenced by their Indigenous women neighbors in upstate New York, and whose activities were reported in the local town newspapers just as much as the colonists’.
This knowledge, along with the stories of Margaret Fell and other early Quaker leaders, has had a profound impact on my life, as I continue to seek and work for women’s rights, and for justice and reparations for our American Indian neighbors.
Maggie Moon O., Black Mountain, NC, USA
The women in my Meeting who supported me, sometimes simply by accepting me with kindness and spoke the truth bluntly but with Love, gave me the gift of seeing the way to be welcoming and strong now.
My feminist education has helped me to stop deferring to the well-fed white men in meeting the world kept turning!
Alice P., Hamilton, ON, Canada
My Spiritual mother was a woman named Esther White, a minister recorded in Oregon Yearly Meeting in the 1930s. She had no children of her own, but like the the woman described in Isaiah 54:1, she had hundreds of spiritual children.
Her teaching, counsel and friendship saved my life.
Dan D., Portland, OR, USA
This Week’s Messages
Quotes by Quaker Women
All Men and Women Are Created Equal
Demanding Representation for Women
The Few Friends Who Were Out in Front on Social Change
Open Your Beauty to the Sun
Call No Man Master, and Emphatically Not in Heaven
Banner image: Rebecca Hoenig
Read the source of today’s quote
