The institution
Who Speaks, Who Decides
Women run three of the Church’s general organizations and sit on its councils. Who presides, who controls the budget, and who speaks at conference, counted from the Church’s own handbook and listings.
The argument
The Church’s answer to “where are the women?” is a real answer, and it deserves to be stated first. Women lead the Relief Society, the Young Women and the Primary at every level. They sit on ward and stake councils. Since 2015 the women who lead those organizations have sat on the Church’s general executive councils. And an apostle has taught that a woman set apart to a calling exercises priesthood authority.
All of that is true. This page asks a narrower question that the Church’s own documents can answer: when a decision has to be made, who makes it? And when the whole Church gathers to hear its leaders, how many of the voices are women?
1. Who speaks
Every listed item on the Church’s official conference pages was counted (talks, the sustaining of officers, the audit report, opening and closing remarks; prayers and music are not listed as items and are not counted), along with the ones given by women.
Women speaking at general conference
Listed items given by women, of all listed items, from the Church’s official session listings.
October 2026: 3 of 38 listed items were given by women.
| Conference | By women | Share |
|---|---|---|
| April 2025 | 3 of 34 | 8.8% |
| October 2025 | 3 of 35 | 8.6% |
| April 2026 | 3 of 37 | 8.1% |
| October 2026 | 3 of 38 | 7.9% |
Source: October 2026, April 2026, October 2025, April 2025 session listings.
Three women, every time. In October 2026 they were Tamara W. Runia, Rosemary K. Chibota and Andrea Muñoz Spannaus. The number of women has been flat, and the total number of listed items has crept up around it. Conferences before 2025 were not counted, so this page makes no claim about the longer trend.
2. Who decides
The General Handbook is the Church’s own rulebook for local leaders. On the questions of who leads, who decides and who spends, it is plain.
General Handbook, chapter 4
What it establishes: Women who lead are real leaders, but their authority is delegated by a priesthood keyholder or someone he has authorized.
Handbook chapter 4General Handbook 29.2.5, ward council
What it establishes: The Relief Society, Young Women and Primary presidents are members of the council. The decision still runs through the bishop.
Handbook chapter 29General Handbook 34.6.1 and 34.5.7, budgets
What it establishes: Every payment in a ward or stake needs the approval of a member of the bishopric or stake presidency. Those offices are held by men.
Handbook chapter 34Above the ward, the pattern holds. The First Presidency, the Quorum of the Twelve, the Seventy and the Presiding Bishopric are filled by men, because the offices require priesthood ordination. General officers, including the women who lead the Relief Society, Young Women and Primary, serve, in the handbook’s words, “under the direction of the First Presidency, the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles, and assigned General Authority Seventies” (chapter 5).
3. Authority without keys
The Church’s strongest answer is that women already hold priesthood authority. Dallin H. Oaks, now the Church’s president, taught it in 2014:
Dallin H. Oaks, “The Keys and Authority of the Priesthood,” April 2014
“When a woman … is set apart to preach the gospel as a full-time missionary, she is given priesthood authority to perform a priesthood function. The same is true when a woman is set apart to function as an officer or teacher in a Church organization under the direction of one who holds the keys of the priesthood.”
The same talk: “Unlike priesthood keys and priesthood ordinations, the blessings of the priesthood are available to women and to men on the same terms.” Note the exception it states: keys and ordination.
Read the talkThe Church’s own essay says the same thing from the other side: “In these and other ways, women exercise priesthood authority even though they are not ordained to priesthood office.” And it quotes President Oaks: “The Lord has directed that only men will be ordained to offices in the priesthood” (Gospel Topics essay). In this teaching, the authority a woman exercises is received from a man who holds keys.
4. What has changed
Sources: Church News, August 2015; Ensign, November 2019; Newsroom, changes since 2018; First Presidency interview, October 2025; Sunday School update, March 18, 2026.
What is true on the other side
- The changes are real. Witnessing ordinances, seats on executive councils, a Sunday School presidency: each is something women could not do before. The Church’s own president says there is more to do. That is not nothing, and it would be unfair to pretend otherwise.
- The Church says it is not its choice. Its position is that male ordination is revelation, not preference. Leaders cannot change what they believe God has fixed. If you accept the premise, the structure follows.
- Councils are not decoration. Amy A. Wright, first counselor in the Primary general presidency, told Church News in July 2026: “First and foremost, the Brethren want and need to hear the voice of women.”
Why this should make you question
In the list of changes above, each one changes what women may do inside the existing structure. None of them changes who holds keys. Even the newest one, a woman leading Sunday School, comes with a rule that a presidency must be all women or all men.
The endowment wording that asked women to hearken to their husbands (revised from “obey” in 1990) was reportedly dropped in 2019. The Church has said temple ceremonies “have been adjusted periodically, including language,” and it does not describe male ordination as a matter of wording. Whether the two are as different as the Church says is the question this page leaves to you.
The point in one sentence
Women are in the room. A man holds the keys, presides over the council, approves the payment, and gives more than nine of every ten listed conference items.
Each piece of that is in the Church’s own handbook or its own conference listings.