The Woman’s Exponent

The Woman’s Exponent, published in Salt Lake City 1872-1914, aimed both to inform and assist Mormon women and to explain and defend them to the outside world. It consistently supported women’s suffrage. This chapter focuses on the Exponent’s strategies to defend both suffrage and the contentious church practice of polygamy through periods when all Utah women voted, when only those not involved in polygamy could vote, and when no Utah woman was allowed to vote. With Emmeline B. Wells, a church women’s leader, as its editor for 37 of its 42 years, the Exponent attempted to cover “every subject interesting and valuable to women,” but suffrage remained a significant goal. The chapter also discusses the Anti-Polygamy Standard, published 1880-83, which opposed suffrage for Mormon women, and Wells’s relationships with national suffrage organizations.