  Other critics (Smith 1982; Broad &amp; Green 2009) point out that the Quakers’ egalitarian approach to female ministry is built upon a purely religious conception of what makes all human beings equal. The problem is that this spiritual equality does not automatically translate into political equality for women in a more general sense. Smith (1982) notes that Fell’s defence of women’s speaking did not “include a questioning of other aspects of sexual hierarchy” (96). In response to 1 Timothy 2:11–12 (“I suffer not a woman to teach, nor to usurp authority over the man”), Fell writes that