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Feminist Shakers:
The Concept of Separate but Equal and Second-Wave Feminism
Katelyn Gebbia
HRE 289
Dr. Jeffrey Bach
April 28, 2015
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Founded in the 1700s by Mother Ann Lee, the Shakers had, and still have, a lot of
seemingly strange beliefs. Some of these beliefs, like celibacy, led to moderate gender
equality in a time before women’s rights were even on the radar. Both women and men
were held to the same standard of celibacy and work ethic. Women had some authority
positions within the sect such as leading other women in prayer while the men led other
men in prayer. Starting around the 1860s when there were less male members than in
previous years the roles of women started growing despite some pushback from both
male and female members. The group steadily moved closer to gender equality than ever
before no matter how reluctantly it seemed the group resorted to this. In fact, Mother Ann
believed that men should be the first in line for power, and a woman could only have
power when a man was not present. With fewer men, women had more equality to the
men that were left allowing for a more feminist group. The Shakers can be compared to
all three waves of feminism, however around the 1860s the group seemed the most
similar to second-wave feminism. While the Shakers achieved relative equality as a result
of the separateness of the sexes it was not through any explicit effort to make women
equal to men, therefore the Shakers were not feminist before the 1860s, but they were
more similar to second-wave feminism after the that time.
The Shakers started out in England around the mid-1700s or just after the English
Civil War. 1 Led by Jane and James Wardley, the early English Shakers in Manchester
held weird beliefs and were often subject to cruel persecution. Ann Lee and her brother
1
Stephen J. Stein, The Shaker Experience In America (New Haven: Yale University Pres.
1992), 3.
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William joined the Wardley Society later known as the Shakers, and Ann and William
quickly became central to the movement.
Ann Lee was married to a blacksmith in 1762 named Abraham Standerin.2 She
had five difficult childbirths where none of the children survived past the age of five. She
turned to the Shakers and their celibate views after this tumultuous time. She saw the
Shakers as a freedom from the oppression of women and the pressure to have children.3
Standerin later left Lee after the Shakers moved to New York.
The Shakers beliefs were considered to be strange by many people. They rejected
clergy, doctrines, liturgies, and sacraments. The Shakers believed that they got their
inspiration directly from God, and so the need for a middleman or clergy member to
deliver the message was unnecessary. In fact, the Shakers would literally shake and
twitch during their meetings to show that the spirit or inspiration of God had entered their
body. This was an odd phenomenon that was one cause for their persecution in England
and derogatory name given to them after their weird movements. Their real name that
they called themselves was the United Society of Believers in Christ’s Second
Appearing, or just the Believers for short. The name “Quaking Shakers” actually had
nothing do to with them other than their quaking and shaking during sermons, and they
were not Quakers at all. The Shakers were a pacifist group, and they refused to take oaths
2
Stephen J. Stein, The Shaker Experience In America, 3.
3
Nardi Reeder Campion, Mother Ann Lee: Morning Star of the Shakers. (Hanover:
University Press of New England, 1990), 81.
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or bear arms. Later they would have a dedication to communal living and common
ownership as well.4
The Shakers believed that preaching, teaching, and prophecy were as appropriate
for women as they were for men, and that men and women should remain celibate and
unmarried their entire lives. Shakers even went so far as to believe that women might
even be more susceptible to Godly inspiration than men, thus at times women were held
at a higher esteem than men.5 The Shakers under Ann Lee believed that the original sin
was sex, and to remain completely sin free they would also have to remain celibate. Ann
Lee claimed to have been told this by the Holy Spirit in a vision, and that by encouraging
others to remain celibate she would be “Waging War Against the Flesh.”6 The Shakers
also believed in a male and female side to God, and since Jesus had manifested as a man
in his first form, then the second coming of Jesus would be as a woman.7 These beliefs
and practices were all a precursor for their later gender equality views, and their rejection
of the subordination of women.
The Shakers were often persecuted for their strange views while in England. This
led to multiple arrests of both Ann Lee, her brother William, and other Shakers. During
one such arrest, Ann Lee claimed to have the power of Christ enter her, and she felt
Christ running through her veins. This was when the Shakers, including the Wardleys and
4
Campion, Mother Ann Lee, 79-80.
5
Stephen J. Stein, The Shaker Experience In America, 6.
6
Campion, Mother Ann Lee, 80.
7
Campion, Mother Ann Lee, 34.
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William Lee, began to revere Ann Lee as the second coming of Jesus.8 The Shakers did
not claim to worship Jesus or Mother Ann as she came to be known later, but the
followers held a deep reverence for them both. To say the group worshiped Jesus or
Mother Ann would say that any one person could have more inspiration from God than
any other. The Shakers believed that any person could have just as much inspiration from
God as another, so the Shakers said they revered Jesus and Mother Ann as the ultimate
example of a sin free life.9
The move to Niskayuna, New York in 1774 was to escape the ongoing
persecution in Manchester, England. In New York, the Shakers set up communal
settlements with common ownership of all items. A group of Shakers including Mother
Ann and William traveled around New England attempting to spread Shaker doctrine to
other communities. Joseph Meacham joined the Shakers when word got out about their
unusual Christian settlement around 1780,10 and he quickly became a leader within the
Shakers after Mother Ann’s death.11 The Shakers spent a good deal of time in
Connecticut, especially Harvard, spreading their doctrines. There was a lot of persecution
received from that area, so Mother Ann made that the center of her focus for a while,
which resulted in a strong Shaker following there.12
8
Campion, Mother Ann Lee, 33.
9
Campion, Mother Ann Lee, 34.
10
Stephen J. Stein, The Shaker Experience In America, 11.
11
Edward Deming Andrews, The People Called Shakers (New York: Dover Publications,
Inc., 1963), 35.
12
Andrews, The People Called Shakers, 37.
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The spread of Shaker doctrine was very successful to the point that there were
Shaker settlements as far as Ohio and Kentucky, and there still exist some aging Shakers
living in one of these communal settlements today at Sabbathday Lake in Maine. These
communal settlements lasted well over two hundred years in the US, but not without a
very long and bumpy history.
In the beginning, the Shakers believed that men and women should be kept
completely separate. The Shakers still hold that belief for the most part, but it has become
more relaxed since the mid-nineteenth century on. The idea was that in order for the
followers or Believers to remain completely celibate they would have to exist completely
independent of the opposite sex. In order to maintain this utter separation of the sexes, the
Shakers implemented a series of rules and structures.
Women and men were believed to exist in different spheres. These spheres
allowed women and men to have their own power structures, and keep out of each other
business. Men could not tell women how to do their job, and women could not tell men
how to do their job. In fact, on one documented occasion where a man attempted to tell
some women how to do their work in the kitchens better, he was kicked out of the
community.13
These separate spheres allowed for the creation of parallel structures. The women
and men were led in similar ways. There are two elders and two eldresses for each family
or communal group within the Shakers, as well as deacons and deaconesses. At first there
were only deacons, but the deaconesses were added later. These structures allowed
13
Priscilla Brewer, “’Tho’ of the Weaker Sex’: A Reassessment of Gender Equality
among the Shakers,” Journal of Women in Culture and Society (1992): 13.
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women into positions of power while the actual roles accorded to them limited how much
power they could accumulate and use. Lawrence Foster believed that this separation of
power gave men and women complete equality in regards to religious leadership at
least.14
One positive thing about the Shakers was the conviction of Mother Ann that both
men and women could receive inspiration from God.15 This comes up time and time
again in her teachings. Mother Ann was illiterate,16 so she was not actually able to write
any of her teachings down, but there is plenty of evidence that Mother Ann was a firm
believer that men and women were equal in their ability to praise God and Christ.
Without this early belief, most or none of the relative gender equality could have been
possible.
Before the 1860s, gender roles in the Shaker communities were very strict.
Women and men were kept completely separate with the exception of the Union
Meetings meant to bring men and women together to talk or sing a few times a week. 17
This kept men and women from being completely isolated, while still maintaining the
modest distance between the sexes. These Union Meetings were held in an open room
with only a handful of people where the women sat in one row facing the men in another.
14
Lawrence Foster, Religion and Sexuality: Three American Communal Experiments of
the Nineteenth Century (New York: Oxford University Press, 1981), 1.
15
Brewer, “Tho’ of the Weaker Sex,” 3.
16
The Shakers: “I don’t Want to Be Remembered as A Chair”. VHS (1994; Princeton,
NJ: BBC Worldwide, 1995).
17
Andrews, The People Called Shakers,179.
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They spoke for about an hour or two before going on their way. Certain topics were not
allowed to be discussed in order to keep the meetings light and happy. Overall, the
Shakers thought these Union Meetings were enjoyable though.
In order to maintain the separation of the sexes, Meacham instituted the
Millennial Laws in 1821 after Mother Ann’s death in the late eighteenth century. These
series of rules were to keep the sexes as separated as possible even going so far as to
outlaw men and women passing each other on the stairs.18 The Millennial Laws also
outlawed women sewing a button onto a man’s clothing while he was wearing them, a
man entering a woman’s room or space, men and women shaking hands, and men and
women giving each other presents. It also mandated that men and women entered the
church through separate doors and continued to sit separately during church services.19
Every citizen of the community was responsible for policing the laws. Every Shaker was
pitted against their neighbor to watch for acts that might be considered to be in violation
of the Millennial Laws. As a result, some Shakers seemed to feel less trust for each other
and feel less safe in their own community.20
The Shakers went so far with their separation of the sexes as to apply it to their
youngest generations. There were no Shaker children born into the community as a result
of their belief in celibacy. Mother Ann thought that freedom from sex and childbirth was
a freedom from oppression for women,21 however children were brought into the
18
Andrews, The People Called Shakers, 178.
19
Andrews, The People Called Shakers, 179.
20
Andrews, The People Called Shakers, 179.
21
Campion, Mother Ann Lee, 81.
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community via adoption during a time with a practically nonexistent social work system
in America, or via new members with existing families joining. These children were
separated from their parents and raised by caretakers. This too was gendered. The boys
were generally raised by male caretakers, while the girls were generally raised by female
caretakers.22 The children were not expected to become Shakers once they came of age;
they were allowed to choose for themselves if they wanted to become Shakers. As a
result, a lot of children, especially males, left the community at that time.23
The boys and girls were all educated. They were all taught to read and write, but
the emphasis was not on this since the type of labor and life they led was not dependent
on literacy.24 However, they were taught religious studies and other things that instilled in
them virtues like union, peace, and hard work. These were the common mottos and
beliefs of the Shakers.25
Boys and girls were not educated together. The children were educated on a
rotating schedule to keep them separated, but also for convenience. The boys were
educated during the winter for practical reasons. By having their education during the
winter, this freed the boys for labor during the summer. This left the girls to be educated
in the summer while the boys were laboring.26 Higher education was granted to a select
few boys whom showed immense talent.
22
Andrews, The People Called Shakers, 186.
23
Andrews, The People Called Shakers, 186.
24
Andrews, The People Called Shakers, 187.
25
Andrews, The People Called Shakers, 187.
26
The Shakers: “I don’t Want to Be Remembered as A Chair”.
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The separation of the sexes allowed for women in positions of power. In no other
community or place were women allowed in positions of power during this time. The
common misconception is that these leaders held the same power and had the same job.
On the contrary, elders had all the power that a normal elder would have like political
power, while the eldresses were treated more similar to a mother-like figure or wife than
an equal female leader.27 The Deacons had the power to exercise legal powers over
property, and manage economic decisions, while deaconesses were little more than mere
counselors to the deacons and held little to no actual power.28 While the eldress and
deaconess positions were not completely equal to the positions that men occupied during
this time period, this was still a huge step for women.
Generally the gender roles overall in the community were traditional with women
doing the cooking, cleaning, most of the young child-rearing, clothes making, and clothes
washing, and the men were in charge of farming, heavy labor, and rearing the older
boys.29 Women and men were not expected to do the same work, but women’s work was
viewed as equally important as men’s work.30 Neither men’s work nor women’s work
was seen as more important than the other according to Shaker doctrine. However, there
were members of the Shakers that believed that men and women were fundamentally
different from each other contrary to what Mother Ann taught about both sexes being
27
Brewer, “Tho’ of the Weaker Sex,” 6.
28
Brewer, “Tho’ of the Weaker Sex,” 9.
29
Brewer, “Tho’ of the Weaker Sex,” 5.
30
Marth Finch, review of Sisters in the Faith: Shaker Women and Equality of the Sexes,
by Glendyne R. Wergland, Church History, 2011, 1.
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equal and both being able to receive inspiration from God. These Shakers believed that
women and their work were inherently inferior to men.31 This came out in their practices.
Meacham was one of these people.32
Women took advantage of the separate spheres to contribute financially. Women
were permitted to do some things within their sphere that was an exercise of their power.
The women were allowed to have workshops and tools in the same buildings that the men
did. These workshops were used for making and selling items.33 While the women were
not permitted to keep their profits, nor were they able to record their profits, they were
able to become a contributing factor to the communities’ economy. However, many
women were not recognized for their substantial contribution to the community despite
their contribution being vital to the stability of the community.34
Women were not able to keep, or record their profits nor were they properly
recognized, because men were controlling the finances as well as being the ones in
charge of engaging with the outside world.35 The Shakers were connected very
thoroughly to the outside world through their series of businesses and trades, however
31
Brewer, “Tho’ of the Weaker Sex,” 26.
32
Brewer, “Tho’ of the Weaker Sex,” 5.
33
Andrews, The People Called Shakers, 123.
34
Brewer, “Tho’ of the Weaker Sex,”4.
35
Brewer, “Tho’ of the Weaker Sex,” 2.
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these were almost entirely run and handled by men.36 Things had to start changing when
men were no longer as abundant in Shaker communities as they were before. Men were
leaving the Shakers more and more around the early to mid-nineteenth century. With
fewer men in the community, women were allowed to start taking over some of the
typically male jobs. This was a reluctant change, and it was resisted very strongly at first,
but it was inevitable and necessary.37
The men stopped trusting the women almost entirely during this time of change.
There was a new series of rules for women at this time meant to put men at ease and
increase the productivity of women. If women were less likely to break rules, then the
Shakers thought that the men would stay. This meant that women could no longer comb
their hair, wash their feet, smoke, scold men, or lay down in the kitchen.38 A series of
strange and seemingly unrelated rules that could or could not impact women’s work, but
were nevertheless implemented in an attempt to staunch the growing number of men and
boys leaving the Shakers.
Starting around the 1840s, when the men were leaving more and more there was
an attempt at a religious revival movement called the Era of Manifestations.39 During this
36
Elizabeth De Wolfe, review of "O Sisters Ain't You Happy?" Gender, Family, and
Community among the Harvard and Shirley Shakers, 1781-1918, by Suzanne R.
Thurman, The American Historical Review, 2003, 9.
37
Brewer, “Tho’ of the Weaker Sex,” 13.
38
Brewer, “Tho’ of the Weaker Sex,” 15.
39
Suzanne Thurman, “’Dearly Loved Mother Eunice’: Gender, Motherhood, and Shaker
Spirituality,” Church History 66 (1997): 755.
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time women in many of the Shaker communities were claiming to receive inspiration
from God in an attempt to restore faith in the younger generation of Shakers whom had
not known Mother Ann. With falling membership and failing faith, a series of
inspirations could have revived the community and bonded them back together into the
strong Shakers they used to be. The revival failed though and many of the leaders within
the Shakers, many of them men especially, believed that inspired women could not
successfully have revived the community due to their sex.40 Many men especially
believed that the inspirations from God were not real and that the women were lying all
along.41 The Shakers were in trouble.
With barely enough men to cover the elder positions, let alone have enough men
left over to do anything else, the Shakers had a decision to make. In the 1850s, the
Shakers decided to allow women to take over men’s positions in the Shakers.42 This did
not go over well with a lot of the remaining men, but the Shakers did not have much of a
choice. Most of the men the Shakers had left were either crippled, sick, or old and not the
kinds of people they wanted in charge.43 So, things started changing slowly. Per Mother
Ann’s beliefs, men always remained the first priority for power, and only when no man
was available could a woman take his place.44 In a time when few women did not even
40
Brewer, “Tho’ of the Weaker Sex,” 18.
41
Brewer, “Tho’ of the Weaker Sex,” 117.
42
Brewer, “Tho’ of the Weaker Sex,” 22.
43
Brewer, “Tho’ of the Weaker Sex,” 22.
44
Brewer, “Tho’ of the Weaker Sex,” 4.
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have the ability to vote outside the Shaker community, this was a ground breaking
concept.
Feminism as a movement truly began just after this rise of power for Shaker
women around the mid-nineteenth century with the battle to gain women the right to vote
known as first-wave feminism. This began with the Seneca Falls Convention in 1848
under the leadership of well-known women like Elizabeth Cady Stanton. Middle class
white women generally led the first-wave of feminism. 45
Then in the mid-twentieth century the second-wave of feminism began with a
push for women to have the right to work, and a general bonding and uplifting of women
in most spheres of their social and civic lives. Second-wave feminism was not primarily
middle class women or exclusively white women. Minority groups and all classes of
women were included in second-wave feminism. This was most similar to the experience
of Shaker women. Shakers did not vote or have much interaction with the outside world,
so they skipped over the first-wave of feminism into the second-wave where women
began to have the right to work and to be more involved with leadership.46
Third-wave feminism began around twenty-five years ago, and is most concerned
with elevating the role of women in society in general, as well as dealing with selfesteem, body image, freedom of sexuality, heteronormativity, and deconstructing the idea
45
Martha Rampton “The Three Waves of Feminism.” Pacific University,
http://www.pacificu.edu/about-us/news-events/three-waves-feminism (accessed April,
24, 2015).
46
Rampton, “The Three Waves of Feminism.”
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that women cannot be smart, pretty, and self-confident.47 Shaker communities did not
take much part in the third-wave of feminism, however some aspects of Shaker life could
be considered similar to third-wave feminist thought.
One of the first things to change for Shaker women was economics. Men handled
the women’s finances for the things they made and sold until the 1850s when in New
Lebanon women were allowed to start having their own accounts and acquiring money in
their own name.48 This was ground breaking not just for the Shakers, but also for women
everywhere to be able to have their own accounts with substantial amounts of money
with the ability to make more, and to spend that money as they please, although most of
the Shaker women gave their earnings back to the community.
This is when things really started to take off. After the 1860s, gender roles were
still very strict compared to modern standards, but they were becoming more relaxed. In
fact, compared to their non-Shaker counterparts, the Shakers could be considered
downright socialist. Noyes called the Shakers pioneers of modern socialism, and he was
not alone. 49 Other modern critics like D’Ann Campbell, Rosemary Ruether, Sally L.
Kitch, Jane Crosthwaite, and Edward Deming Andrews all weighed in on the apparent
socialist empowerment of women and utopian-like achievements of the Shakers.50
Women were always permitted into positions of inspiration within the church,
which permitted them access to power in the church. However, actual Church leadership
47
Rampton, “The Three Waves of Feminism.”
48
Brewer, “Tho’ of the Weaker Sex,” 23.
49
Andrews, The People Called Shakers, 130.
50
Brewer, “Tho’ of the Weaker Sex,” 1-2.
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was often barred from them. With fewer men, these leadership positions were opened to
them in some cases. Women were also in charge of raising the boys on a growing basis
around this time.
Women for the first time in 1880 were allowed full and equal representation and
equal authority on the board of trustees. There were two women on the board of trustees,
which was equal representation compared to the two men.51 Women were even taking
over some positions completely. In communities where there were not enough men to
create even a modest majority or equality, there was a woman chairing an all or mostly
all female finance committee.
Women were also allowed to begin to interact with the outside world. Before this
time, women were not allowed to interact wit the outside world, but in small and
increasing numbers women were allowed to venture out into the world to handle business
trade as the men once did. The Shakers at this time were involved with the raising of fruit
trees, building and selling furniture, as well as raising silk worms for a short time.52
Women were also permitted to go out on missionary work to gain new followers during
this time.53 Women were considered natural caregivers, and this trait was not thought to
be cohesive with power positions or the business world. Men were thought to be naturally
dominant,54 so women had to really fight in order to be taken seriously by the Shakers
51
Brewer, “Tho’ of the Weaker Sex,” 24.
52
Suzanne Thurman,“O Sisters Ain’t You Happy?” (Syracuse: Syracuse University
Press, 2002), 139.
53
Thurman, “O Sisters Ain’t You Happy,” 130.
54
Brewer, “Tho’ of the Weaker Sex,” 26.
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when they started taking over positions of traditionally male power. It took time, but they
eventually did obtain some equality and reverence similar to what they used to have a
hundred years ago under Mother Ann.
The Shaker newspaper was renamed in 1873 from the Shaker to the Shaker and
Shakeress to reflect the changing views and beliefs of the mid to late 1800s. This was the
work of one Anna White. She was a late convert to Shakerism when she was in her late
teens, but she was a strong feminist. She even sat on chairs and had memberships for
feminist organizations in the greater non-Shaker community. Much of the work that
White did outside of the Shaker community was with first-wave feminism groups. White
was one of the most progressive feminist Shakers in Shaker history, and an influential
feminist outside of the Shaker community for the rights of all women as well.55
Despite White’s involvement with first-wave feminism and women’s right to
vote, most times the Shakers decided to remain out of the political sphere. However, they
did involve themselves with advocacy of some typical political beliefs. Such things they
advocated for included child welfare, women’s rights, and literacy. The Shakers did not
vote until 1928 when the Mount Lebanon community decided to vote in the presidential
election that year. The Sabbathday Lake community very strongly vocalized their
intentions to remain outside of the political sphere of voting.56
White was not the only feminist Shaker though. She was joined by some low-key
unnamed feminist Shakers whom groomed her into the eldress she became. She was also
55
Brewer, “Tho’ of the Weaker Sex,” 24-25.
56
Cathy Newman, “The Shakers’ Brief Eternity.” National Geographic, June 9, 1989,
323.
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joined by Elder Evan, one of the remaining male members, who wrote for the Shaker and
Shakeress and believed that feminism was a “radical truth” that Shakers needed to help
spread to the rest of the world via their strong influences.57 Brother Sears in 1871 also
advocated for women’s inalienable rights following Mother Ann’s beliefs. Sears believed
that women’s rights were as natural and sacred as men’s were, and they should be
protected just like men’s rights.58
Women’s dress started to change in the 1890s as one of the last changes of the
nineteenth century. Women often abandoned the cap, a longstanding symbol of
oppression, in favor of a bare head.59 This was an admission that men could control their
own sexuality, and women were not in charge of hiding themselves for the protection of
men. A lesson that modern politician could learn. While the sisters still wore conservative
traditional dress, the cap was a major step forward.
The abandoning the traditional cap by Shaker women could be considered similar
to third-wave feminism. Third-wave feminists do not take shame in their sexuality or see
how they dress as indicative of their abilities or intelligence. Shaker women were
beginning to acknowledge their sexuality, and to acknowledge that abandoning
traditional dress did not make them bad Christians or undesirable under God. The Shaker
women were also acknowledging that men did not control female sexuality, and that men
were in charge of maintaining their own sexuality and celibacy.
57
Brewer, “Tho’ of the Weaker Sex,” 20.
58
Brewer, “Tho’ of the Weaker Sex,” 21.
59
Finch, Review of Sisters in the Faith By Wergland. 2.
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Not all scholars agreed that Shaker women were gaining much by this move
towards women’s increasing power. In fact, some went so far as to claim that women
were losing power through this switch towards a feminist-like group. Procter-Smith
would argue that with women taking over more men’s jobs then men were also more
involved with women’s jobs.60 The spheres that used to allow for relative equality were
now blurred to the point where women did not have the complete autonomy over
themselves that they used to have fifty years ago. This would prevent the Shakers from
being considered a feminist group with women arguably having les power even as they
appeared to gain more power and roles every year.
Some scholars like Procter-Smith argue that the Shakers were never feminists at
all or failed to achieve a feminist group. They would argue that the Shakers were a victim
of their circumstances in the mid-nineteenth century, and they never intended for such
intense gender equality, but they were merely attempting to survive. The Shakers were
always growing and adapting to changing ways during. Unlike some groups like the
Amish, the Shakers were not afraid of changing times, and they were often some of the
first to embrace new technology like telephones or electricity.61
The presence of the belief that men should always be placed into positions of
power whenever possible does corroborate the claim that Shakers did not adapt gender
equality on purpose, however the outstanding work that the Shakers did well before the
rest of the country and the rest of the world shows that the Shakers had some sense of
60
Marjorie Procter-Smith, Shakerism and Feminism: Reflections on Women’s Religion
and the Early Shakers, (Old Chatham: Shaker Museum and Library, 1991), 15.
61
Newman, “The Shakers’ Brief Eternity,” 318.
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gender equality and feminism. The Shakers were not just victims of circumstance; a part
of the gender equality they achieved was intentional and should be commended.
The Shakers were accomplishing major second-wave feminist goals before and
during early first-wave feminism showing how committed the Shakers were to the
concept of gender equality. The Shakers established women in power positions fifty years
before the rest of America could even manage to grant women’s suffrage. Some scholars
even go so far as to argue that the Shakers had more gender equality in the beginning
than we currently recognize. While the Shakers had some gender equality given their
separation of the sexes prior to the 1860s, separate does not always equate to equality as
evidenced by Brown v. Board of Education nearly a hundred years later. The United
Society for Believers in Christ’s Second Appearing did achieve a feminist-like group
similar to second-wave feminism after the 1860s when things started changing within the
Shaker community.
Gebbia 21
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