The REAL Reason Watchtower Teaches Women To Tolerate Abuse

In a leaked 2020 video, Mark Sanderson of the governing body told sisters whose husbands hold positions in the organization of Jehovah's Witnesses:

Remember your husband may have many different assignments but remember your assignment doesn't change. It always is to support your husband.

You might shrug at that. Women support, men lead, and that's true in a lot of conservative Christian religions. But Watchtower's version is different, and the difference shows up when a woman tells the elders she was raped. The 2025 elders manual tells them to weigh the circumstances that led up to the incident and any delay in reporting. It also points them to an entry in Watchtower's Bible encyclopedia, Insight on the Scriptures, that discusses part of the Mosaic law:

If the engaged girl failed to scream, thereby indicating consent, she was also put to death.

That is not the official rule for Jehovah's Witness women anymore. It was until 2003. Yet the elders manual still points to that entry for elders to consider when they decide whether to believe her, or whether her lack of resistance or delay in reporting indicates consent. That line didn't come out of nowhere. For decades, Watchtower taught it as a rule.

The Thread That Runs Through 150 Years of Watchtower Teaching on Women

I was a Jehovah's Witness for 40 years. I saw the way women were treated and what they were told to do when they were with an abusive spouse. I also did a deep dive into Watchtower's past to find the thread that runs through all of it.

In every generation the language about women gets softer, but the rule underneath stays the same. The reason it doesn't change isn't really about women. At its core, it's about authority.

Watchtower runs on a single line of command from the top down. In the home, the wife is the second-to-last link in that chain. Only her minor children are under her. Once a male becomes an adult, even if he is her child, she can become subject to him too if he has any position in the congregation. Somebody has to be in command, and in the family, under Watchtower theology, it isn't her.

Sanderson was right about one thing: the assignment doesn't change. What changes is how politely they talk about it. But going from god-awful to just awful isn't progress.

The history of the Jehovah's Witness view of women falls into six stages: the founder, the judge, the Knorr years, the rape teaching, battered wives, and where it lands today.

Charles Russell: Women as "Satan's Most Efficient Representative"

Charles T. Russell started the Watchtower magazine in 1879. In 1904 he published the sixth volume of his Studies in the Scriptures series, The New Creation, which has a whole chapter on what he called woman's province in the church. There is nothing ambiguous about what he says. He explains why Jesus didn't pick any women as apostles, then writes:

This is the reverse of the method of the great adversary, who, although ready to use either sex as his tools, has always found woman his most efficient representative. The first woman was Satan's first ambassador.

Women are Satan's most efficient representative, and Eve was his first ambassador.

Russell also explains why a woman shouldn't be a public teacher. Her nature, he says, makes her want to please and be praised, which is wonderful in the kitchen and dangerous in public. If she gets in front of people as a lecturer, teacher, or writer, he says she is in a position of great danger. She can't lecture, she can't teach, and she shouldn't even write.

In marriage, he says that even if the wife is smarter than her husband, or has better judgment about the guidance of the home, the spending of money, and the training of the children, she is not at liberty to assume the headship. If she did, he says, the husband would gradually lose what little manhood he possessed and become merely her tool, her slave. So being smart or being right doesn't give you the authority to make decisions in the home. He adds that if anyone disputes the apostle's guidance on women, let him be consistent and reject him as an apostle in toto.

Here is Russell's advice to the woman who is smarter or more capable than her husband:

As for his weaknesses and poor judgment, not only will I hide these from outsiders, but so far as possible, I will hide them from myself.

Hide them from yourself. Just pretend not to notice.

The Court Case That Exposed Russell's Domination of His Wife

The obvious pushback is that this was a long time ago, and attitudes toward women were very different then. That's true. But Russell didn't write this in a vacuum. He was married, and his wife, Maria Russell, was one of the original incorporators of the Watchtower Society. In the 1890s their marriage fell apart. That means he published what we just read in 1904, some years after his marriage to a woman clearly smart and capable enough to be an original incorporator had collapsed.

In a letter to Maria that is in the court record, Russell wrote that it is a great mistake for strong-minded men and women to marry. In 1906, in the Watchtower, he admitted that he forbade her relatives to visit her. He printed the notice he sent to four of her friends in 1897, ordering them not to receive her in their homes, visit her, or meet her, and not to correspond with her either directly or by proxy through others, or be liable for such heavy penalties as the courts of Allegheny County may prescribe. So Russell threatened people with legal action if they even visited her. His reason was that they would bring her false sympathy and evil encouragements.

Maria filed a case in 1903, and a jury found in her favor. Russell appealed, and the case went to the Superior Court of Pennsylvania in 1908. The court read all 150 pages of testimony. Here is what the judge wrote about Russell:

His course of conduct toward his wife evidenced such insistent egotism and extravagant self-praise that it would be manifest to the jury that his conduct towards her was one of continual arrogant domination that would necessarily render the life of any sensitive Christian woman a burden and make her condition intolerable.

And this is the part that is the key to the whole story:

There is not a syllable in the testimony to justify his repeated aspersions on her character or her mental condition. Nor does he intimate in any way that there was any cause for difference between them other than that she did not agree with him.

She didn't agree with him. That was the whole problem. If you were ever a Jehovah's Witness, that should sound familiar: disagree and get rejected.

Remember that in 1904 Russell wrote the doctrine that a wife who disagrees with her husband, even when she's right, is violating God's arrangement. That is the basis not only for how women are treated, but for how all rank-and-file Jehovah's Witnesses are treated in this organization.

By the end of the founder's era, the Bible Students run by Russell were a religion whose founding text said women are Satan's favorite tool. It was written by a man a court found had dominated his wife simply because she disagreed with him.

Rutherford: Women Make "Monkeys or Dupes of Men"

After Russell died in 1916, Joseph F. Rutherford took over, and under Rutherford it gets worse.

In 1922 the Watchtower answered a question about a sister who volunteered to do the work of an elder, a deacon, a secretary, and a treasurer. The answer was that no sister is qualified to be an elder or a deacon, and that a sister should not have too much to say about the business affairs of the church. If she kept it up, it said, she would be properly dealt with.

Four years later, in his 1926 book Deliverance, Rutherford wrote:

It seems quite evident that woman is an easy instrument in the hands of the devil.

That was printed again in 1929 and in 1931. Rutherford's 1931 book Vindication has a section called "Women to the Fore." It starts by noting that women were given the right to vote in 1919, and connects the dots to Watchtower's teaching that Satan was thrown out of heaven and began preparing for Armageddon in 1918. Women voting was now part of Satan's end-time plans. Then he writes:

The women make monkeys or dupes of men. The men have become effeminate, soft, and easily influenced and have lost their real manhood and sturdiness in the affairs of state and home.

His examples of how women do this are the custom of men seated at a table standing as a woman approaches, and men removing their hats when a woman is present. According to Rutherford, that was a scheme of Satan. The passage was reprinted almost word for word in the Watchtower in 1938.

In his 1930 book Light, Rutherford wrote about one of the original incorporators of the Watchtower Bible and Tract Society. He was referring to Maria Russell, whom he described as a woman, the wife of the president, who insisted on editing the Watchtower, and he tied her to "that woman Jezebel, which calleth herself a prophetess." The founder's wife, the woman a court said had been dominated for disagreeing, became the Jezebel of the Bible in the organization's doctrine.

Keep in mind that what I quoted earlier came from a court embedded in the culture of the day, not a modern court. Even then, these views were considered extreme, at least under the law.

To be fair, Rutherford adds that there are and always have been good women in the church. The good ones, he says, serve as witnesses. The others attempt to dictate to the men what they should do. Russell had already called women Satan's favorite tool. What Rutherford adds is that women's freedom itself, including the ability to vote and a man standing or tipping his hat out of politeness, is satanic strategy.

The Knorr Years: Inferior by Design, Questioning Is "Untheocratic"

Rutherford died in 1942 and Nathan Knorr took over. The tone gets calmer, but the doctrine gets codified.

In 1949 the Watchtower ran an article called "Woman's Place in the Congregation." It says:

But even if the female is made inferior to the male, yet God has so arranged it that the male is dependent upon the female for continued existence.

Then it asks who has a right to find fault, and what complaining would accomplish. Nothing, it says, but spiritual injury to the complainer, because it would be untheocratic.

Notice that word, untheocratic. Theocracy is the line of command in Watchtower theology. So a woman complaining about her place isn't disagreeing with her husband. She's disagreeing with God.

In 1955 the Watchtower printed this:

Wives who are not submissive to their husbands are copying Satan, not Christ.

And:

After all the modern prattle about equality dies down, the fact still stands that only in homes where the husband is a proper head do contentment and deep joy exist.

It also said that if the woman runs the home, she will ruin it. In fairness, that same 1955 article goes on to say the wife does manage the household, the budget, and the shopping, but that equality is prattle.

In 1962 the Watchtower quoted a psychologist who said that all women like to work under a ceiling of authority. In short, they like to be bossed, and basically women feel while men think. Then the Watchtower added its own line:

What this authority refers to as nature's plan we recognize as God's purpose.

In 1967 Awake! reached for the science of the day. It said that the female skull is lighter and that its cranial capacity is about 10 percent smaller than that of the male, and that implicit in these findings is that man is advantaged by a greater brain size.

That line about cranial capacity was cited by Samuel Herd, who is currently one of the governing body members running the religion. Here is what he said:

You know, scientists say that the cranial capacity of a woman is 10% smaller than that of man. So now this shows that she's just not equipped for the role of him. Her role is one of subjection to the man. Her role is that of submissiveness, and that means that she should recognize that she is a woman and be glad to be alone. Never want to be what you are not to be. But we'll hear a sister say, "Oh, if I were an elder, I'd show them a thing or two." Or sometimes we hear them say, "Oh, if I were a man, I'd do this and I'd do that," as if to be wishing to be something that he had not designed to be. Do you know what that borders on? That borders on homosexuality. And you know what the devil is doing nowadays? He's taking women who want to be men. He makes men out of them. And you know what else he's doing? He's taking men who want to be women and he's making women out of them. And it's not a little thing.

By the end of the Knorr era, the tone had changed from hostility to something that sounds reasonable. Women aren't the devil's tools anymore. They're made inferior by God, and that's not man's fault, is it? They're built to be bossed around, and their brains are slightly smaller. It's a physical limitation. This is when Watchtower's line of command was fully sealed. Questioning a woman's place is untheocratic, which means questioning it is questioning God.

The Rape Teaching: "If a Christian Woman Does Not Cry Out"

Everything so far is ugly, but it's words and attitudes, and it can be argued that lots of men felt that way in 1904, 1931, and 1955. Even if a court in Russell's day disagreed, that doesn't mean all men did. That's fair.

What comes next isn't just an attitude or culture. It's a rule, one that decided whether a woman who had been raped had sinned.

In January of 1964 the Watchtower printed a Questions From Readers article about Deuteronomy 22, the law that says an engaged Israelite girl attacked in a city had to scream. The reader asked what if a Christian woman is attacked and the man threatens her life with a weapon. Does she still have to scream? The answer was yes. These scriptures, it said, do not weaken the argument or alter the situation by citing any circumstance that would justify her in not screaming:

It plainly says she should scream, hence oppose the attack regardless of the circumstances.

And then:

Thus, if a Christian woman does not cry out and does not put forth every effort to flee, she would be viewed as consenting to the violation.

So if a man has a weapon and threatens her if she resists, and the woman, afraid for her life, doesn't scream, in Watchtower's view she gave her consent.

It gets worse. On the next page, about the chance of being stabbed to shut her up, it asks:

Would not the endurance of such physical punishment be insignificant compared to the disgrace and shame of submitting to an immoral man?

Potentially being seriously injured or killed is insignificant compared to the shame she would suffer. That is what the magazine every Jehovah's Witness studied at the time told women.

Four years later, in 1968, the Watchtower repeated it:

Would it be different if the man had a weapon and threatened to kill you if you did not submit?

The answer was no. On the same page it said that if a woman adopts the provocative, suggestive styles of dress now so prevalent, she indicates that she is a woman of loose morals, and in so doing she may invite trouble.

In 1974 Awake! told a story about a Jehovah's Witness woman:

Early in 1973, a young Christian woman decided to go home alone late one evening around 10:00. Although warned not to do so, she almost made it, but going around to the back entrance of her apartment building, she was grabbed by a man who threatened her with a knife. She failed to scream and was raped.

She failed to scream. They put the blame on her. The same article mentions two 15-year-old girls held for four hours and repeatedly raped, and then asks what business two teen girls had on the streets around midnight. Again, it was basically their fault.

What American Courts Were Doing at the Same Time

During the years Watchtower printed those things, American courts were moving in the opposite direction. For a long time, many US states had what was called the utmost resistance rule: a victim had to prove she physically fought or it wasn't rape. Legal reformers spent the 1960s and 70s tearing that standard down because they had figured out what it actually did. It punished victims who froze in fear. California's legislature removed its resistance requirement in 1980. States were abandoning the idea while Watchtower was printing it as the word of God.

Dinah and the 1985 Watchtower

It didn't stop there. In 1985 the Watchtower took up the story of Dinah in Genesis 34. It says plainly that he raped her. Then it says this:

Even if there was no measure of consent by Dinah, she still bore some responsibility for losing her virginity.

And:

What a horrendous chain of events, and all because Dinah failed to guard her associations!

It finishes by making her a warning to young Christian women today. You see the thread: it's always the woman's fault.

By the mid-1980s, the rule a Witness woman lived under was this. If you're attacked and don't scream, that's consent. If you dress wrong, you invited it, so it's your fault. If you went somewhere you had no business being, you bore some responsibility for what happened. And the people deciding which of those applied to you were three unqualified men in the back room of a Kingdom Hall.

Battered Wives: "Making the Situation Endurable"

Watchtower followed the same kind of reasoning when it came to battered wives. The rape teaching decided whether a woman had sinned. This one decides whether she was allowed to leave an abusive spouse.

In 1963 the Watchtower said extreme physical abuse could be grounds for separation when it happens so often that one's health and life are actually in jeopardy. That's quite the caveat. And the very next sentence says:

On the other hand, the Christian wife may find that there are things she can do to avoid outbursts of anger on the part of her mate, thus making the situation endurable.

So figure out a way to put up with it. That's the counsel.

In 1975 a Questions From Readers article took on the beaten wife directly. It suggests the elders might help the couple examine themselves to see where they can improve. Then it asks the wife whether she is the one responsible: do you nag or provoke him? Yes, it's still the woman's fault if he beats her, just like with rape.

Then it gives her an example to consider: a woman in Wisconsin whose husband, when he drank, slapped her, kicked her, and punched her arms. She and the children spent many nights in the barn's haymow, keeping the entrances barricaded with bales of hay. (A haymow is the loft in a barn where they keep the hay.) The abuse continued for more than 20 years, and the article says she now has the joy of seeing 10 of her 11 children serving Jehovah.

She's praised for enduring 20 years of beatings and barricading her kids in a loft. That's the encouraging outcome. Not once does the article mention the impact on the wife's or the children's mental and emotional health.

To be fair, the article does say an abusive Christian husband can be disfellowshipped, and that if things get dangerous enough, she can decide whether to seek legal protection. But they don't praise a woman for doing that. They praise her for enduring the abuse, for hiding behind the hay with her children.

There's outside context here, too. In October of 1974, about seven months before that article was published, a group of women in St. Paul, Minnesota, opened what's widely considered the first battered women's shelter in the United States. While the outside world started building places for abused women to run to for safety, Watchtower was telling them to hide in the haymow until it blew over.

The 2012 and 2018 Watchtower Accounts

In 2012 the Watchtower ran an experience about a woman named Selma, whose husband was hostile to her studying with Jehovah's Witnesses. She told the sister studying with her:

The night before, Steve had hit me as I had tried to prove a point.

The sister had her read 1 Corinthians 13 and asked how many of those loving acts she showed her husband. Then the sister softly said, "Selma, who is trying to be a Christian here? You or Steve?" The happy ending: after 17 years, Steve accepted the truth.

So the thread continues. Put up with it, because who knows, someday he might convert. That's from 2012, not 1904 or even 1955. A woman says her husband hit her the night before, and the counsel is to ask what she's doing to show him love.

In 2018 the Watchtower talked about an unbelieving husband who might be extremely physically abusive, even to the point that she feels her health or life is in danger. It says some Christians in that situation have decided to separate. But it says other Christians in comparably difficult situations have not:

They have endured and tried to work at improving matters.

And then:

Many loyal Christians have remained with an unbelieving mate under very trying circumstances.

So her life may be in danger, and some women do choose to leave, but others have endured, and the loyal ones are the ones who stayed and put up with it. They were saying that in 2018. The pattern for abused wives is 55 years old and is still the standing counsel from Watchtower. Leaving is technically allowed, but the stories they tell every time are about the woman who stayed. Those are the ones held up as loyal to God and his word.

What Has Changed, and What Hasn't

I want to be fair about what has changed, because some things have. In 2003 the Watchtower said a woman who couldn't scream because she was mute, unconscious, or paralyzed with fear could leave matters in Jehovah's hands, and that victims shouldn't blame themselves. The current elders manual says it directly: one who was raped would not be guilty of sexual immorality. Before 2024, sisters couldn't wear pants to the Kingdom Hall either, and now they can. The softening for women continues, at least on the surface, at least in word.

But here is what hasn't changed. On paper, the 1964 rule is gone. Look at what the elders manual still puts in front of the men deciding a rape claim. The latest edition of Shepherd the Flock of God, the elders' rule book that rank-and-file members, especially women, are forbidden from reading, tells elders to weigh this:

Elders need discernment when considering claims of rape. They should take into consideration factors such as the mental disposition of the person, the circumstances that led up to the incident, and any delay in reporting.

The sources it points to for that are the 2003 Watchtower about screaming and the Insight "Fornication" entry. As for any delay in reporting, do just five minutes of research on assault survivors and you'll find that a delay in reporting is the normal response. But for elders, it is still a factor in whether she consented and is guilty of sin.

The Two-Witness Rule

Then there's the two-witness rule. The same manual says a committee should not be formed if there is only one eyewitness. It also says that generally images or audio or video recordings are not acceptable evidence of wrongdoing. So a woman who is the only eyewitness to her own rape starts with no committee unless he confesses or the elders find other evidence that the manual says is acceptable. A recording generally won't be enough to get him removed from the congregation or clear her name.

Domestic Violence Versus Boxing

Compare two rules from the same appendix. For domestic violence, when deciding whether to form a committee, elders should consider the person's pattern of behavior, attitude, and how severely he has damaged the lives of others. It's decided case by case. But if a Christian took up a violent sport that involves intentionally inflicting bodily injury and refused to stop despite repeated counsel, a committee should be formed.

A man who takes up boxing and won't stop gets put in front of a committee. A man who beats his wife gets his pattern of behavior considered. And in the section on a husband who refuses to support his family, the manual asks, "When a separation is involved, to what extent is the wife responsible?"

Who decides all of that? Only men.

Governing Body Testimony and the Royal Commission

In 2015, Geoffrey Jackson of the governing body testified under oath before Australia's Royal Commission into child sexual abuse. Asked whether women could become elders, he said no, there is no leeway there. He said women have a very dignified role and that in God's view, men and women are equal. Then he compared it to flying a plane: you can't fly an airplane by committee. There has to be a pilot and a co-pilot.

The Royal Commission's final report put it in plain terms. It said child abuse survivors had to describe their abuse to a group of male elders, that the requirement did not result in their disclosure of the full extent of the abuse, and that it caused the victims further trauma and distress.

By Pew Research's numbers, about two-thirds of Jehovah's Witnesses in the United States are women. The other third make all the rules and all the decisions.

Mark Sanderson's Story About the Circuit Overseer's Wife

All of this brings us back to the leaked Mark Sanderson video. In that same training session, he tells a story from when he was a young man working in a convention office. A circuit overseer's wife came in and passed along instructions from her husband. Here is what he said:

I remember one time when I was younger, I was working in an office at a convention and one of the traveling overseers was there. He was helping in the office and he was away. He was doing something and his wife came in and she spoke to the brothers and she said, "My husband asked me to come here and tell you that he wants you to do this. He wants you to do that, and he would like for all this to be done by the time that he returns to the office." What do you think? Now, of course, I was just a young man, but I was sort of dumbfounded, you know. I was just kind of staring at this sister, thinking, "My word, does she not understand how she appears?" And how do you think the brothers and sisters not only viewed her, but how do you think they viewed her husband when they saw her manifest that type of an attitude? Almost feeling like she was the circuit overseer, you see, coming in to give direction. Not good.

The woman was simply relaying her husband's instructions. That's all she did. And Sanderson uses her as the example of a woman who forgot her place.

Why Watchtower's Position on Women Never Changes

Look at all six eras together, because they're all part of the same story. In each era the words change. Satan's ambassador becomes a devil's instrument, becomes made inferior, becomes smaller-brained, becomes a very dignified role. Underneath the words, three things never change. Women can't decide anything. A woman who disagrees is the problem. And when something terrible happens to her, the first question to ask is, "What did she do?"

Go back to Russell in 1904: dispute what the apostle Paul says about women and you might as well reject everything he wrote. That's why the position hasn't changed.

This isn't really about women. It's about authority. A wife who can tell her husband he's wrong is practice for a congregation that can tell its elders they're wrong, and for elders who can tell the governing body they're wrong, too. That's why a woman simply telling a group of men what her husband said is a problem in that religion. It isn't because of what she said, since what she said were the instructions of the man in the position of authority. It's because of what it looked like: someone lower down in the hierarchy giving direction.

I'm not going to lie and say it hasn't gotten a little better. It has, and the women stuck inside the organization deserve to know that at least somebody noticed. You won't see the Watchtower print that women make monkeys or dupes of men in 2026. But from god-awful to just awful is still awful. When a woman tells three men she was raped, one of the passages they are sent to read still explains a girl's silence as "thereby indicating consent."

Sanderson said it best, even if he didn't mean to. Your assignment doesn't change, he tells women. For almost 150 years, it most certainly hasn't.