This is some interesting reading on the matter from Sourcerer (a.k.a. Steve Benson)
Shannon Weber, in her recent and powerful article, "A Woman's Unanswered Questions" (excerpted below), addresses the lack of equality and respect for women that continues to shackle and suffocate females in the Patriarchally-Gripped LDS Church:
"A few months ago I committed to fully explore my angst with women's role in the Mormon Church. I was nudged forward in this quest by simple but unanswerable comments from my children. My six-year-old daughter complained, 'It is better to be a boy!' When asked why she explains 'Only boys can be "the President, the prophet or pass the sacrament.' I know the Church-sanctioned responses but I am unable to pass the vague one-liners and untruths to my kids. I replied, 'One day a woman will be president and you will come with me to vote for her. Women were prophets and I'm not sure why we've stopped talking about and looking for them.'
"I was stumped in responding to her observation of the sacrament. No plausible explanation came to my mind. Another day my five-year-old son proudly tells me 'It is better to be a boy because you can pee standing up and when you get bigger you get the priesthood.'
"I'm aghast to consider the priesthood (governing in the Church and home, access to inspiration, the powers to act in God's name) as such an entitlement. Clearly the rift between what I know and what my children have learned is larger than I had realized.
"Changes for Women in My Lifetime
"I have been waiting with faith and hope my entire adult life for change. . . . However, an analysis of the changes for women in my lifetime shocked me. The results:
"--1) Women allowed to pray in sacrament meeting (1978)
"--2) Married women allowed to go to the temple without their husbands (1978)
"--3) The temple ceremony changed from women 'obeying' their husbands to women 'following' the counsel of their husbands (1990)
"--4) The Proclamation on the Family (1995)
"--5) Standards for women's grooming (2001)
"Much of this change is not progressive and the sights not on equality. . . . Equality does not mean 'sameness' or putting male expectations on females.
"Equality is the expectation and the support for women to be whom they are, who God made them to be. Christ aptly modeled equality in his teachings, parables and interactions with women while gently going against the cultural norm with Godly behavior toward all humans.
To read more, continue the article here:
http://www.mormoncurtain.com/topic_womeninmormonism.html#pub_2092255492