Strength and Submission

What are we to make of Amish women? Their acceptance of traditional gender roles, their overt submission to male authority, and their indifference to demands for the liberation of women would appear to put them squarely at odds with the objectives of feminism. Yet even the briefest contact with Amish women throws this conclusion into doubt. Their quiet self confidence, strength and clarity of purpose, and unassuming self-respect are all attributes actively sought by feminists. These attributes are nourished by the high regard with which women are held in Amish society. The level of recognition they receive in their unabashedly patriarchal society is still being sought by feminists in the society around them.

(from The Amish Struggle with Modernity, Donald Kraybill, ed.)