God has given men and women different but equal and essential roles that complement each other.

 We read in the proclamation, “Fathers are to preside … in love and righteousness,” and “mothers are primarily responsible for the nurture of their children.”Preside does not mean dominate, and nurture does not mean a secondary role. God has given men and women different but equal and essential roles that complement each other.

The Family Proclamation—Words from God

October 2025

General Conference

Ronald A. Rasband

https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/study/general-conference/2025/10/21rasband?lang=eng&verse=#p

Why opposed to changes that homogenize the differences between men and women or confuse or alter gender

 Fundamental to us is God’s revelation that exaltation can be attained only through faithfulness to the covenants of an eternal marriage between a man and a woman. That divine doctrine is why we teach that “gender is an essential characteristic of individual premortal, mortal, and eternal identity and purpose.”

That is also why the Lord has required His restored Church to oppose social and legal pressures to retreat from His doctrine of marriage between a man and a woman, to oppose changes that homogenize the differences between men and women or confuse or alter gender....Satan....seeks to oppose progress toward exaltation by distorting marriage, discouraging childbearing, or confusing gender....we affirm that the family proclamation, founded on irrevocable doctrine, defines the kind of family relationships where they most important part of our eternal development can occur.  

Divine Love in the Father’s Plan

April 2022

General Conference

Dallin H. Oaks

https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/study/general-conference/2022/04/51oaks?lang=eng&verse=#p

Men and women have different but equally important responsibilities in the home and the Church. Priesthood power can help each person perform those responsibilities for the benefit of all.

 “Men and women have different but equally important responsibilities in the home and the Church. Priesthood power can help each person perform those responsibilities for the benefit of all.

“Because God’s priesthood power is on the earth today, great blessings are available to all worthy Church members, whether they are old or young, male or female, single or married.”

—President Joy D. Jones, Primary General President

Experiencing Priesthood Power

March 2021

2021

https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/study/liahona/2021/03/experiencing-priesthood-power?lang=eng&verse=#p

Our knowledge of God’s revealed plan of salvation requires us to oppose current social and legal pressures to retreat from traditional marriage and to make changes that confuse or alter gender or homogenize the differences between men and women.

Our knowledge of God’s revealed plan of salvation requires us to oppose current social and legal pressures to retreat from traditional marriage and to make changes that confuse or alter gender or homogenize the differences between men and women. We know that the relationships, identities, and functions of men and women are essential to accomplish God’s great plan.
....we are beloved children of a Heavenly Father, who has taught us that maleness and femaleness, marriage between a man and a woman, and the bearing and nurturing of children are all essential to His great plan of happiness. Our positions on these fundamentals frequently provoke opposition to the Church. We consider that inevitable. Opposition is part of the plan, and Satan’s most strenuous opposition is directed at whatever is most important to God’s plan. He seeks to destroy God’s work. His prime methods are to discredit the Savior and His divine authority, to erase the effects of the Atonement of Jesus Christ, to discourage repentance, to counterfeit revelation, and to contradict individual accountability. He also seeks to confuse gender, to distort marriage, and to discourage childbearing—especially by parents who will raise children in truth.

Truth and the Plan

October 2018

General Conference

Dallin H. Oaks

Elevate the Term Homemaker

Do we also teach our sons and daughters there is no greater honor, no more elevated title, and no more important role in this life than that of mother or father? I would hope that as we encourage our children to reach for the very best in this life that we also teach them to honor and exalt the roles that mothers and fathers play in Heavenly Father’s plan....The last principle we need to stand and defend is the sanctity of the home. We need to take a term which is sometimes spoken of with derision and elevate it. It is the term homemaker. All of us—women, men, youth, and children, single or married—can work at being homemakers. We should “make our homes” places of order, refuge, holiness, and safety. Our homes should be places where the Spirit of the Lord is felt in rich abundance and where the scriptures and the gospel are studied, taught, and lived. What a difference it would make in the world if all people would see themselves as makers of righteous homes. Let us defend the home as a place which is second only to the temple in holiness.

APRIL 2015 General Conference, "Defenders of the Family Proclamation", Bonnie L. Oscarson

Women Posses the Complement of the Priesthood Powers

The Lord has directed that only men will be ordained to offices in the priesthood. But, as various Church leaders have emphasized, men are not “the priesthood.”11 Men hold the priesthood, with a sacred duty to use it for the blessing of all of the children of God.

The greatest power God has given to His sons cannot be exercised without the companionship of one of His daughters, because only to His daughters has God given the power “to be a creator of bodies … so that God’s design and the Great Plan might meet fruition.”12Those are the words of President J. Reuben Clark.

He continued: “This is the place of our wives and of our mothers in the Eternal Plan. They are not bearers of the Priesthood; they are not charged with carrying out the duties and functions of the Priesthood; nor are they laden with its responsibilities; they are builders and organizers under its power, and partakers of its blessings, possessing the complement of the Priesthood powers and possessing a function as divinely called, as eternally important in its place as the Priesthood itself.”13

THE KEYS AND AUTHORITY OF THE PRIESTHOOD By Elder Dallin H. Oaks - April 2014 GENERAL CONFERENCE  

Men and Women Have Different But Equally Valued Roles

In our Heavenly Father’s great priesthood-endowed plan, men have the unique responsibility to administer the priesthood, but they are not the priesthood. Men and women have different but equally valued roles. Just as a woman cannot conceive a child without a man, so a man cannot fully exercise the power of the priesthood to establish an eternal family without a woman. In other words, in the eternal perspective, both the procreative power and the priesthood power are shared by husband and wife.

 APRIL 2013 GENERAL CONFERENCE - “THIS IS MY WORK AND GLORY” - ELDER M. RUSSELL BALLARD