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Another tiny step in equalizing and making Women’s session more directly a part of GC: https://www.deseretnews.com/article/865691821/LDS-Church-alters-general-conference-equalizes-womens-and-priesthood-sessions.html ” class=”bbcode_url”> https://www.deseretnews.com/article/865691821/LDS-Church-alters-general-conference-equalizes-womens-and-priesthood-sessions.html Women’s session and priesthood session will each be Saturday night of GC weekend, but each only once per year.
I think it is a small step, but I also see it as a big move in some ways. Honestly, I still get looks when I say “women’s session of General Conference” of “first session of General Conference” (referring to the Women’s Session).
That is something… when (if ever) do you think will they announce that they are pushing the age of the Men’s session down to 8 years of age to match the Women’s session? Woohoo! Four fewer hours of meetings per year! Good step, keep going… I like it – a lot. I like it! I just hope they also have more women speak during the general session so that we don’t hear from women even less in the year as a whole. I know at the last general session there were only 2 women speakers so hopefully they’ll have at least 4 speak in the general session if not more than that. That’s my only concern with it though, I think it will be nice having a slightly shorter conference! Less meetings. :thumbup: Moving the Women’s Session to be during the general conference weekend.
:thumbup: :thumbup: The comments in that article range anywhere from, “Good. Now where’s my 2 hour block?” to “Only if the two hour block describes the amount of time we spend
outsideof church on Sunday.” Great. Only having priesthood session once a year will be nice. Now all they need to do is have the RS meeting be conducted by a member of the RS general presidency. It’s fine if the prophet still presides- that’s just how it works.
Quote:
Now all they need to do is have the RS meeting be conducted by a member of the RS general presidencyNot until the 22nd Century, Beefster. One change per century.
I’m not crazy about this change. Women’s voices during conference weekend have already been on the decline. Last year there were 2 talks + 2 prayers by women during the four main sessions. In April there was 1 talk + 2 prayers by women. In October there were 2 talks + 0 prayers by women. That is not an encouraging trend. Now, it’s possible that this change will come with an overall increase of female voices at the pulpit (can you imagine if all 4 of the main sessions featured at least 1 woman speaker? They’d still be outnumbered 6 or 7 to one, but it would be a huge increase!) but that would be a break from the current trend. I’ll be happy to eat my words if I’m wrong. I also dislike drawing a direct comparison between the Women’s and PH sessions. Makes it seem like our church has two genders, Women and Priesthood.
I found out when the stake YM and YW presidencies meet, the meeting is called “AP/YW presidency meeting”. What is wrong with “YM/YW” (Just for kicks I always write it down as YW/YM. It throws people off. AmyJ wrote:
That is something… when (if ever) do you think will they announce that they are pushing the age of the Men’s session down to 8 years of age to match the Women’s session?
I’d actually prefer they move the age for women’s session up to 12 instead. Living here in the east where those evening sessions start at 8:00 and of late end at 9:30 (it used to be priesthood ended at 10) all the deacons and most of the teachers and priests are asleep by 8:30 anyway because it’s boring and they probably only came because Dad dragged them and/or they wanted the root beer floats beforehand. At least that’s the way it was before they started televising priesthood. I can’t imagine the women’s session is much different. My belief is they’re probably losing more kids than they’re saving by having them come to those sessions.
Joni wrote:I also dislike drawing a direct comparison between the Women’s and PH sessions. Makes it seem like our church has two genders, Women and Priesthood.
Shhh! Don’t tell anybody, but there ARE two genders in the church, and everywhere else.
😯 
I get your point about calling it priesthood instead of men’s and it’s be OK with me if they changed the name to men’s session – but that seems unlikely since we have weekly PH meetings as well as weekly RS and YW meetings. Of course it’d be OK with me if they eliminated this type of gender divided session altogether, but mostly because it would be one less meeting. FWIW, I don’t believe this change will lead to fewer women speaking or praying in the other four sessions. For the more progressive among the Q15 (essentially 13 at the moment) women’s sessions is already a session of conference, this just seems to make that more clear. And DFU, now 50% of the Quorum of the First Presidency, was largely responsible for that change in nomenclature.
DarkJedi wrote:
Of course it’d be OK with me if they eliminated this type of gender divided session altogether, but mostly because it would be one less meeting.
Is there anything said during the Women’s session that is only relevant to women? Is there anything said during the Men’s session that is only relevant to men? I can’t speak to the Women’s session but I’ve heard quite a few people make comments like, “That was a really good talk, I wish
everyonecould have heard it.” during the Men’s session. Joni wrote:I’m not crazy about this change. Women’s voices during conference weekend have already been on the decline. Last year there were 2 talks + 2 prayers by women during the four main sessions. In April there was 1 talk + 2 prayers by women. In October there were 2 talks + 0 prayers by women. That is not an encouraging trend. Now, it’s possible that this change will come with an overall increase of female voices at the pulpit (can you imagine if all 4 of the main sessions featured at least 1 woman speaker? They’d still be outnumbered 6 or 7 to one, but it would be a huge increase!) but that would be a break from the current trend. I’ll be happy to eat my words if I’m wrong.
I brought this up in a different thread. There are only 9 women GAs. I expect that during the October conference when it’s the women’s turn we’ll see something similar to what we see now. Three women speakers during the Women’s session and two more women speakers for the remainder of conference.
During the April conference I hope we’ll see five women speakers during the non-Men’s sessions of conference. So five women speakers spread out over the remaining 4 sessions. Meaning at least one session with two women speakers. Could I see them doing that?
:think: Maybe dropping down to four, one per session, which is still more than what we do now… but only for those April conferences.My thought is that in part it’s an issue of crunching the numbers. If you have five women speakers that’s 55% of all the women GAs giving a talk each conference. The men give roughly 30 talks because there are nearly 120 of them. That’s about 25% of the men GAs giving a talk each conference.
Lots of ways to address this, some better than others.
You could have the women GAs give three talks per conference like what members in the first presidency do.
- You could ask people that aren’t GAs to give talks.
- My favorite, call 110 more women GAs… or release 55 men and replace them with women.
Funny follow-up note: It was announced in church on Sunday about the change in Priesthood/Women’s General Broadcast, and my husband turns to me and asks if I already knew about it (of course I said yes) and he gave me the weirdest look. He considers me “lapsing” in daily habits right now – he managed to read the BoM completely before Stake Conference as challenged, dresses more sharply for church than I do, has more meaningful public prayers and makes time for scripture study. I am happy for him that he is choosing a path that brings God more into his life. He is not wrong – I could have better habits in some areas. However, he is not as right as he thinks he is either. While he may read more, I am trying to be more Christ-like and go over the scriptures inscribed on my heart while living daily life. And because of the choices he makes and some unpleasant life circumstances (like him getting floored by a flu and a cold this week – his recovery takes about 4x as long as mine does), I take on more responsibilities in the home.
He was just baffled by the fact that the “lapsing” one had information before he did – did not compute:)
NOTE: I told him that I belong to an LDS group that had shared the news with us.
AmyJ wrote:
Funny follow-up note:It was announced in church on Sunday about the change in Priesthood/Women’s General Broadcast, and my husband turns to me and asks if I already knew about it (of course I said yes) and he gave me the weirdest look. He considers me “lapsing” in daily habits right now – he managed to read the BoM completely before Stake Conference as challenged, dresses more sharply for church than I do, has more meaningful public prayers and makes time for scripture study. I am happy for him that he is choosing a path that brings God more into his life. He is not wrong – I could have better habits in some areas. However, he is not as right as he thinks he is either. While he may read more, I am trying to be more Christ-like and go over the scriptures inscribed on my heart while living daily life. And because of the choices he makes and some unpleasant life circumstances (like him getting floored by a flu and a cold this week – his recovery takes about 4x as long as mine does), I take on more responsibilities in the home.
He was just baffled by the fact that the “lapsing” one had information before he did – did not compute:)
NOTE: I told him that I belong to an LDS group that had shared the news with us.
It was clearly posted Friday on LDS.org and other sources like Mormon Newsroom, Deseret News and the SL Tribune. If one of the advantages of LDS.org and other LDS social media is that we can “instantly” get messages from the prophet, then some people are clearly in need of some oil in their lamps and/or they are asleep as the bridegroom approaches. Revelations like this don’t come every day, and if we’re not paying attention we’ll miss them. (I say this tongue-in-cheek, of course.) I happened to be blessing the sacrament this week so I could see the congregation and was quite surprised at the number of people who didn’t seem to know about this until the letter was read (judging by their expressions/reactions).
😯 I also heard someone make a comment about “a whole two hours saved next year.”🙂
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