Mormon Feminists Don’t Like Romney

Participants in a Days of '47 Pioneer Day Parade, which honors the settling of Utah by the Mormon pioneers.Brian Cahn/ZUMAPress

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Though President Obama holds an advantage among female voters, Romney doesn’t seem to have a women problem in the polls. At least not yet. But there’s one group he definitely can’t count on: Mormon feminists.

Romney’s awkward and tone deaf comments on women in Tuesday’s debate did not sit well with this crew, who follow the teachings of Joseph Smith, but are pushing back against the church’s chauvinistic ways.

Aimee Hickman, co-editor of a Mormon feminist magazine, told Reuters she didn’t have a problem with the candidate’s “binders full of women” comments so much as Romney’s response to a question about pay equity. He said, “[O]ne of the reasons I was able to get so many good women to be part of that team was…because I recognized that if you’re going to have women in the workforce that sometimes you need to be more flexible. My chief of staff, for instance, had two kids that were still in school.” Hickman thought his comments reflected the “church’s paternalistic language that casts women ultimately as mothers,” according to Reuters. “The emphasis on them (women) being seen as leaders or them being seen as breadwinners is still really missing from our rhetoric,” she said.

Lisa Butterworth, who runs the blog Feminist Mormon Housewives told Reuters, “I pretty much know every Mormon feminist, and I can’t think of any of them that are going to vote for Romney.”

Hickman’s magazine did a poll of around 100 of its readers this week, and found Obama favored over Romney by 72 to 30.

As Mormon feminists go, so goes the nation? We shall see. My colleague Stephanie Mencimer notes that Romney has never won a majority of women voters in any of his previous election runs.

According to Reuters, one reader wrote into Hickman’s magazine to comment, “I can’t help but feel he is so far removed from my life he can’t begin to imagine how his actions help or hinder it.”

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WHO DOESN’T LOVE A POSITIVE STORY—OR TWO?

“Great journalism really does make a difference in this world: it can even save kids.”

That’s what a civil rights lawyer wrote to Julia Lurie, the day after her major investigation into a psychiatric hospital chain that uses foster children as “cash cows” published, letting her know he was using her findings that same day in a hearing to keep a child out of one of the facilities we investigated.

That’s awesome. As is the fact that Julia, who spent a full year reporting this challenging story, promptly heard from a Senate committee that will use her work in their own investigation of Universal Health Services. There’s no doubt her revelations will continue to have a big impact in the months and years to come.

Like another story about Mother Jones’ real-world impact.

This one, a multiyear investigation, published in 2021, exposed conditions in sugar work camps in the Dominican Republic owned by Central Romana—the conglomerate behind brands like C&H and Domino, whose product ends up in our Hershey bars and other sweets. A year ago, the Biden administration banned sugar imports from Central Romana. And just recently, we learned of a previously undisclosed investigation from the Department of Homeland Security, looking into working conditions at Central Romana. How big of a deal is this?

“This could be the first time a corporation would be held criminally liable for forced labor in their own supply chains,” according to a retired special agent we talked to.

Wow.

And it is only because Mother Jones is funded primarily by donations from readers that we can mount ambitious, yearlong—or more—investigations like these two stories that are making waves.

About that: It’s unfathomably hard in the news business right now, and we came up about $28,000 short during our recent fall fundraising campaign. We simply have to make that up soon to avoid falling further behind than can be made up for, or needing to somehow trim $1 million from our budget, like happened last year.

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