Editing Gender equality (section)

===Shakers===
The [[Shakers]], an evangelical group, which practiced [[sex segregation|segregation of the sexes]] and strict [[celibacy]], were early practitioners of gender equality. They branched off from a [[Quaker]] community in the north-west of England before emigrating to America in 1774. In America, the head of the Shakers' central ministry in 1788, Joseph Meacham, had a revelation that the sexes should be equal. He then brought [[Lucy Wright]] into the ministry as his female counterpart, and together they restructured the society to balance the rights of the sexes. Meacham and Wright established leadership teams where each elder, who dealt with the men's spiritual welfare, was partnered with an eldress, who did the same for women. Each deacon was partnered with a deaconess. Men had oversight of men; women had oversight of women. Women lived with women; men lived with men. In Shaker society, a woman did not have to be controlled or owned by any man. After Meacham's death in 1796, Wright became the head of the Shaker ministry until her death in 1821.

Shakers maintained the same pattern of gender-balanced leadership for more than 200 years. They also promoted equality by working together with other women's rights advocates. In 1859, Shaker Elder Frederick Evans stated their beliefs forcefully, writing that Shakers were "the first to disenthrall woman from the condition of vassalage to which all other religious systems (more or less) consign her, and to secure to her those just and equal rights with man that, by her similarity to him in organization and faculties, both God and nature would seem to demand".<ref>{{cite book |first=Frederick William |last=Evans |url=https://archive.org/details/shakerscompendi00conggoog |title=Shakers: Compendium of the Origin, History, Principles, Rules and Regulations, Government, and Doctrines of the United Society of Believers in Christ's Second Appearing |place=New York |publisher=D. Appleton & Co. |year=1859 |page=[https://archive.org/details/shakerscompendi00conggoog/page/n40 34] }}</ref> Evans and his counterpart, Eldress Antoinette Doolittle, joined women's rights advocates on speakers' platforms throughout the northeastern U.S. in the 1870s. A visitor to the Shakers wrote in 1875:
{{Blockquote|Each sex works in its own appropriate sphere of action, there being a proper subordination, deference and respect of the female to the male in his order, {{em|and of the male to the female in her order}} [emphasis added], so that in any of these communities the zealous advocates of "women's rights" may here find a practical realization of their ideal.<ref>Glendyne R. Wergland, ''Sisters in the Faith: Shaker Women and Equality of the Sexes'' (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 2011).</ref>}}

The Shakers were more than a radical religious sect on the fringes of American society; they put equality of the sexes into practice. It has been argued that they demonstrated that gender equality was achievable and how to achieve it.<ref>Wendy R. Benningfield, Appeal of the Sisterhood: The Shakers and the Woman's Rights Movement (University of Kentucky Lexington doctoral dissertation, 2004), p. 73.</ref>