Unexpected rules for Amish females

Karen M. Johnson-Weiner

There's little use in talking about the American Amish, much less Amish females, as if they were all members of a monolithic group.

The reality is that there are multiple "Amish" orders, all with different rules collected in a broad set of often-unspoken guidelines known as the Ordnung.

These rules dictate the lives of everyone in the patriarchal Germanic Amish Christian faith, laying out community-specific guidelines on everything from the depth of a man's hat brim to whether or not it's okay to have a refrigerator in one's home.

Anything she can do, I can do better. I'm a man!

Generally speaking, all Amish settlements emphasize plain, unadorned dress styles, rural living, pacifism, and some separation from the outside world — and no, they're not the same as Mennonites or Quakers or Shakers or Puritans.

Ruined by the lavender menace?

When it comes to both community and family life, females are almost always expected to be subservient to men. Yet, they also take the lead on many homemaking matters, including child rearing, food preparation, cleaning, and working on the farm.

It all seems rather simple. Amish girls are expected to observe rules that demand they remain subservient, wear plain clothing, and remember to be faithful and modest into womanhood.

However, these directives can get quite surprising and sometimes elaborate, depending on where a female lives and her personal convictions.

I can run my own biz.

For instance, it wouldn't be beyond the pale to see an Amish woman leave the family farm and run her own business.

Think you already know everything about the rules of an Amish woman's life? Think again.

The rules of Amish female power are more complex than most Americans think

Being submissive is a common rule for Amish girls, but it's not just a matter of going along with a father, brother, uncle, or husband's decisions or quietly following the rules of male church elders.

In fact, all Amish people are expected to submit in one way or another. Males are directed to submit to God and to treat their wives well and care for them with love and respect (though there are also reports of widespread abuse in some communities).

There's also a rather tricky biblical verse, Galatians 3:28, in which readers are informed that "there is neither male nor female: for ye are all one in Christ Jesus."

To balance this, the Amish generally agree that males and females ought to have separate roles in their communities but that the work done by females is theoretically just as important as that of males. And though Amish females may not have official power in their communities, they wield practical power in everyday life, such as when they organize home or church activities.

• The film My Big Fat Greek Wedding made this age-old distinction clear: "The man is the head of the house, the man is the head of the house...but the woman is the neck."

Everyone is responsible for his or her own spiritual life, too. As one woman in the highly conservative Swartzentruber Amish group states:

"The Amish way is that the men have to go ahead of the women [during baptism], but the women get baptized just as well as the men do." More: grunge.com (Unexpected rules Amish women have to follow)

The Lives of Amish Women

Karen M. Johnson-Weiner's on Amish Women

(Kindle Edition) Author Karen M. Johnson-Weiner has 4.2 out of 5 stars (with 6 reviews). Presenting a challenge to popular stereotypes, this book is an intimate exploration of the religiously defined roles of Amish females and how these roles have changed over time.

Continuity and change, tradition and dynamism shape the lives of the Amish and make their experiences both distinctive and diverse.

On the one hand, a principled commitment to living Old Order lives, purposely out of step with the cultural mainstream, has provided Amish females with a good deal of constancy. Even in relatively more progressive Amish communities, women still engage in activities common to their counterparts in earlier times: gardening, homemaking, and childrearing.

On the other hand, these persistent themes of domestic labor and the responsibilities of motherhood have been affected by profound social, economic, and technological changes up through the 21st century, shaping Amish females' lives in different ways and resulting in increasingly varied experiences. 

In The Lives of Amish Women, Johnson-Weiner draws on her 35 years of fieldwork in Amish communities and her correspondence with Amish women to consider how the religiously defined roles of Amish women have changed as Amish churches have evolved.

Looking in particular at females' lives and activities at different ages and in different communities, Johnson-Weiner explores the relationship between changing patterns of social and economic interaction with mainstream society and women's family, community, and church roles.

What does it mean, Johnson-Weiner asks, for an Amish woman to be humble when she is the owner of a business that serves people internationally?

Is a childless Amish woman or a single Amish woman still a "Keeper at Home" in the same way as a woman raising a family? What does Gelassenheit—giving oneself up to God's will [not in a slavish way but rather "'tranquil submission' in the Christian mystical tradition"]—mean in a subsistence-level agrarian Amish community, and is it at all comparable to what it means in a wealthy settlement where some members may be millionaires?

Illuminating the key role Amish women play in maintaining the spiritual and economic health of their church communities, this wide-ranging book touches on a number of topics, including early Anabaptist women and Amish pioneers to North America;

• stages of life;
• marriage and family;
• events that bring women together;
• women as breadwinners;
• women who do not meet the Amish norm (single women, childless women, widows); and
• even what books Amish women are reading.

Aimed at anyone who is interested in the Amish experience, The Lives of Amish Women will help readers understand better the costs and benefits of being an Amish woman in a modern world and will challenge the stereotypes, myths, and imaginative fictions about Amish women that have shaped how they are viewed by mainstream society. More