Nope, she said she can’t.

As a member of the bishopric my husband is often tasked with finding speaker for sacrament meeting. As his sounding board, I am often suggesting names to this response. Over and over.

I’m baffled at the number of women who aren’t willing to speak in church.

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Almost eleven years old, sitting in the burnt orange plush pews of the stake center with my dad bouncing my baby sister on his knee. Two little sisters and a brother color beside and between us. I’m watching the first stake conference I will remember. My mom is at the podium, still new in her calling as Stake Young Women’s President, speaking to the chapel packed back to the stage curtains. Awed by her tenacity and storytelling, I grinned with pride at my mother looking so smart in her teal dress suit with jet buttons.

Later when I’m alone and she’s elsewhere, I slide back the mirrored door of her closet to try the suit jacket on my own narrow shoulders.

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She offered to have her husband speak. She says he’s a really good speaker.

Together we sigh, shaking our heads. She’s so thoughtful, so kind, so much fun, so intuitive. We live in an inclusive ward, where women are encouraged to lead, comment and speak, but still there is so much hesitancy.

Why is it so hard to get women to speak in church?

My husband implores. I try to explain that they may see their spouses as having more experience, as the scriptorians or more confident with public speaking. Men are taught, expected to do this. Women aren’t always.

My husband sloughs off my reasoning, I just don’t know.

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Last week I attended a panel discussion with LDS Women Bloggers. Design Mom Gabrielle Blair, Meg Conley, Top Hat from Exponent and Petra from Zelophehad’s Daughters fielded questions about their lives as women with viral voices. Women who are heard.

Yet even as they speak so much and to such wide audiences, they are a minority. Men talk more than women in larger groups, even more so in religious settings. For example, Sunday School. They pointed out a study (that I wish I could find, I’ve tried and failed) that Mormon men comment more often than women. Men are used to speaking and used to being heard. For many Mormon women, that’s not the case.

The panel pointed out how many of them have taken flack from for writing as openly and often as they do. Trolls and other pains in the side.

The need for boundaries and and liability-if you’re going to going to speak up and out, you must own your own words.

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Maybe trying to free my mother of one more child my dad took me out on his high council rounds. I watched him speak, I listened and observed as he spoke in rented downtown rooms in the sketchy side of town and in a house turned funeral home turned make-shift chapel. He spoke with ease, referencing his day planner notes. I figured if he could I would.

When I was older, he asked and I did. He gave me a topic and told me to write a talk to pair with his and prepare to give it six times. Over and over, I stood up and shared my ideas, until it was easy; my notes were not my transcript. My dad beamed.

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Following the event Meg Conely wrote:

“We need all women’s voices – the ones that remind us womanhood can beautiful, the ones that remind us womanhood can be transcendent, the ones that remind us womanhood can be complicated, the ones that remind us womanhood can be hurt, the ones that remind us womanhood can be strong, the ones that remind us womanhood can doubt, the ones that remind us womanhood can believe. We need them all. Which means we need you all. Amen.”

How do we make women’s voices more welcome?
How do we make those women feel confident not just to speak, but speak their truths and testimony?