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ALL THAT FITS A WOMAN

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The 20th Century will be remembered for many things, one of the most significant will be the emergence of women in leadership both inside and outside of the church.

Scales book gives pause for consideration by anyone interested in how women recognize the call of God and then pursue that call with tenacity, perserverance and determination. All That Fits a Woman is much more than a history of the training of Southern Baptist Women at the school in Louisville, KY, it is a wonderfully woven, and meticulously researched, story of the passion for God that supersedes all of life's other considerations and drives one to do the extraordinary for others in need.

Highly recommended!

At a timely moment, when questions about the role of women in religious institutions cross social and ecumenical lines, Scales offers a well-documented, detail-oriented history of the founding of the Women's Missionary Union Training School in Louisville, Kentucky in 1907. The educational arm for training Baptist women both for foreign missions and their duties in and for "home" in the broadest sense of the word, the WMU's founding offers in microcosm the issues and trends of the time. The author details the inside maneuvering among Baptists of the early 20th century south juxtaposed with the larger history of women's movements in the United States, for the two often coincided in their concerns: slavery, temperance, women's education and role in society. Individual stories weave across broader historical developments and are set against the background of the at-times contentious relationships among Baptist organizations throughout the United States, and in particular in the south, where the evolution of the Southern Baptist Convention would come to dominate the particular coda of Baptist life below the Mason-Dixon line. The depth of Scales worth, though, is found in the details: students' daily lives at the WMU, their studies, development of domestic skills, their activities, be it drama or music, and the evolution from "calling" in the courtship process to the gradual freedom of the unchaperoned "date" of "dining and dancing, Coke dates, movies, parking." The author never waivers in her assessment of the driving force and enduring legacy of the creation of this school for females as it empowered women in the utilization of the skill most significant for home and church, yet one whose imprimatur yet awaits a final Baptist consenus: their leadership.