When we lived in Saudi Arabia a few years ago, I obtained a faculty position in the fairly newly-formed department of Health and P.E. at a university which was strictly segregated by gender. The women’s side of the university operated independently, with our own female custodians, technical staff, professors and administration, and very little oversight from the male president. Our department consisted of five women, and we made all decisions collectively, with no titular head. After the first semester I was there, one of our staff meetings was dedicated to the question of whether we should have a department head. Being the newest addition to the faculty, I had little say in this decision, but I did bring up the point that we had successfully administrated the department jointly, and I questioned the necessity of one department head. It would completely change the group dynamics that we had experienced as a body of women removed from a patriarchal hierarchy and which I very much enjoyed. The reply from all of the rest of the women, though there had been no problems thus far, was that “you HAVE to have a leader,” that one person MUST be in charge of any organization.
At the time I was struck by how much this assertion resembled the one I have heard from many Mormons justifying the hierarchical, patriarchal system in place in the Church, both within the institution and within our individual families.
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