A Preview of Voices for Equality: Ordain Women and Resurgent Mormon Feminism

Check out this  preview of “Voices for Equality: Ordain Women and Resurgent Mormon Feminism” including this chapter by Dialogue editor Kristine Haglund and Dialogue contributor Courtney L. Rabada “The Great Lever: Women and Changing Mission Culture in Contemporary Mormonism.”
Here is a snippet:
“Since then, policies about length of service, age requirements, and the number of sisters in the field have changed in response to circumstances, seemingly quite pragmatically, without expressed concern about a need to provide doctrinal warrant. This may be, of course, because a requirement for scriptural warrant would almost certainly exclude women from proselytizing efforts—the scanty record of women’s lives in scripture offers no precedent for female missionaries. Nonetheless, Mormonism’s open canon and commitment to ongoing revelation could in theory provide canonical support or at least doctrinal justification for women’s involvement in proselytizing work. The fact that these warrants have not been perceived to be necessary may tell us something important about the possibilities for an expansion of women’s roles in the Church: in some significant areas like missionary work, increasing women’s participation is more a matter of pragmatic policy change than revising doctrine. Resistance to change is largely located in questions about process, rather than about the content of contemplated changes. That is, women are not seen as incapable of performing certain ecclesial functions, but merely (and perhaps temporarily) enjoined from participation