WOMEN's ROLES in HUTTERITE SOCIETY Yossi Katz And

GENDER, POWER AND EQUALITY: WOMEN’S ROLES IN HUTTERITE SOCIETY Yossi Katz and John C. Lehr Introduction The Hutterian Brethren are an observant Christian Anabaptist community with origins in Moravia, in the first half of the 16th century. The community is unique in its commitment to communal living, its Christian Anabaptist religious practice, and its desire to isolate itself both spatially and socially from the surrounding world, all of which are deeply embod- ied in its theology. The Hutterite community is today the largest in the western world that is based on community of goods (full sharing of assets), minimal personal assets and social equality. After 250 years of wanderings and persecution in central and east Europe, the Hutterites left the old world and in the 1870s immigrated to the United States, where they established a few communities. During the First World War, because of their German identity and their pacifist refusal to either bear arms or support the war effort, they were harassed by their American neighbours. Their young men were conscripted and impris- oned in brutal conditions for refusing to serve. As a result the Hutterites decided to liquidate their communities in the United States and move to Canada. Many years later they returned to the United States and established new communities there. Today the Hutterian Brethren num- ber more than 45,000 people living in almost 500 separate communities (100–120 people in each). Most of their communities are in Canada’s prai- rie provinces of Manitoba, Saskatchewan and Alberta. The remainder are in British Columbia and the central and western states of the United States: South Dakota, North Dakota, Minnesota and Washington. The Hutterian Brethren are divided into three leut or groups: the Schmiedeleut, the Dariusleut and the Lehrerleut. In the early 1990s the Schmiedeleut subdivided into two groups: one conservative (Group 2) and the other more liberal (Group 1) (Katz and Lehr 2007; Janzen and Stanton 2010; Hofer 2004; von Schlachta 2008). From the time of their arrival in North America the economy of most Hutterite colonies has been based upon agriculture. Crops are grown with 242 yossi katz and john c. lehr both self-sufficiency and the market in mind. In recent years depressed commodity markets and the high price of agricultural land has caused some colonies to incorporate manufacturing into their economy. Each colony is headed by a lay minister, who is the supreme religious and economic authority of the colony. The community is managed by the boss, who is in charge of the colony’s economy, and the farm boss, who is the manager of agricultural operations. The German language teacher also has an important role within the colony. He is responsible for teaching the Hutterite religion and tradition, the German language and the Hutterian dialect to the school children for two hours each day. Every colony has an English school, which is a school operated by the provincial or state gov- ernment, where the children follow the provincial or state curriculum. Other core positions include those of the second minister and the head cook. The colony leadership is constituted of the minister, the second minister, the boss, the farm boss, and two colony elders. Usually, when the colony’s population exceeds 120 people, the colony starts the process of branching out and establishing a daughter colony. Each colony is an independent social and economic unit. However, the colonies maintain a diverse system of mutual aid and economic coopera- tion. They also interact and cooperate in social and religious matters. The ministers of colonies within each leut convene and formulate rules intended, among other things, to maintain the conduct of the communities’ members according to the tenets of Hutterian religious principles and traditions. Contrary to popular belief, the Hutterite communities today are not a monolithic body, in the sense of “you have seen one colony – you have seen them all”. Perhaps in the past colonies were more uniform in their physical appearance and their socio-economic organization. However, today, there are many differences between colonies, even those within the same leut, in their social behaviour, their adherence to Hutterian religious decrees and their attitudes towards interaction with the outside secular world. The Lehrerleut colonies are generally the most conservative, resisting interaction with the secular world as much as possible and opposing change to the traditional way of life. The Dariusleut are seen as less rigid, although some Dariusleut colonies are more conservative than many Lehrerleut colonies. The Schmiedeleut are generally the most liberal, but even here there are significant differences within the leut. The Schmiedeleut subdivided in the beginning of 1990s, splitting into a group of communities considered more conservative and whose economy is based on agriculture (Group 2 colonies), and to a group of more liberal .

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