The
Equal Rights Amendment Is Re-Introduced
Then, in 1972, the Equal Rights
Amendment, which had languished in Congress for almost
fifty years, was finally passed and sent to the states
for ratification. The wording of the ERA was simple: "Equality
of rights under the law shall not be denied or abridged
by the United States or by any state on account of sex."
To many women's rights activists, its ratification by
the required thirty-eight states seemed almost a shoo-in.
The campaign for state ratification
of the Equal Rights Amendment provided the opportunity
for millions of women across the nation to become actively
involved in the Women's Rights Movement in their own communities.
Unlike so many other issues which were battled-out in
Congress or through the courts, this issue came to each
state to decide individually. Women's organizations of
every stripe organized their members to help raise money
and generate public support for the ERA. Marches were
staged in key states that brought out hundreds of thousands
of supporters. House meetings, walk-a-thons, door-to-door
canvassing, and events of every imaginable kind were held
by ordinary women, many of whom had never done anything
political in their lives before. Generous checks and single
dollar bills poured into the campaign headquarters, and
the ranks of NOW and other women's rights organizations
swelled to historic sizes. Every women's magazine and
most general interest publications had stories on the
implications of the ERA, and the progress of the ratification
campaign.
But Elizabeth Cady Stanton proved
prophetic once again. Remember her prediction that the
movement should "anticipate no small amount of misconception,
misrepresentation, and ridicule"? Opponents of the
Equal Rights Amendment, organized by Phyllis Schlafly,
feared that a statement like the ERA in the Constitution
would give the government too much control over our personal
lives. They charged that passage of the ERA would lead
to men abandoning their families, unisex toilets, gay
marriages, and women being drafted. And the media, purportedly
in the interest of balanced reporting, gave equal weight
to these deceptive arguments just as they had when the
possibility of women winning voting rights was being debated.
And, just like had happened with woman suffrage, there
were still very few women in state legislatures to vote
their support, so male legislators once again had it in
their power to decide if women should have equal rights.
When the deadline for ratification came in 1982, the ERA
was just three states short of the 38 needed to write
it into the U.S. constitution. Seventy-five percent of
the women legislators in those three pivotal states supported
the ERA, but only 46% of the men voted to ratify.
Despite polls consistently showing
a large majority of the population supporting the ERA,
it was considered by many politicians to be just too controversial.
Historically speaking, most if not all the issues of the
women's rights movement have been highly controversial
when they were first voiced. Allowing women to go to college?
That would shrink their reproductive organs! Employ women
in jobs for pay outside their homes? That would destroy
families! Cast votes in national elections? Why should
they bother themselves with such matters? Participate
in sports? No lady would ever want to perspire! These
and other issues that were once considered scandalous
and unthinkable are now almost universally accepted in
this country.
More Complex Issues Surface
Significant progress has been
made regarding the topics discussed at the Seneca Falls
Convention in 1848. The people attending that landmark
discussion would not even have imagined the issues of
the Women's Rights Movement in the 1990s. Much of the
discussion has moved beyond the issue of equal rights
and into territory that is controversial, even among feminists.
To name a few:
· Women's reproductive rights. Whether or not women can
terminate pregnancies is still controversial twenty-five
years after the Supreme Court ruling in Roe v. Wade affirmed
women's choice during the first two trimesters.
· Women's enrollment in military academies and service
in active combat. Are these desirable?
· Women in leadership roles in religious worship. Controversial
for some, natural for others.
· Affirmative action. Is help in making up for past discrimination
appropriate? Do qualified women now face a level playing
field?
· The mommy track. Should businesses accommodate women's
family responsibilities, or should women compete evenly
for advancement with men, most of whom still assume fewer
family obligations?
· Pornography. Is it degrading, even dangerous, to women,
or is it simply a free speech issue?
· Sexual harassment. Just where does flirting leave off
and harassment begin?
· Surrogate motherhood. Is it simply the free right of
a woman to hire out her womb for this service?
· Social Security benefits allocated equally for homemakers
and their working spouses, to keep surviving wives from
poverty as widows.
Today, young women proudly calling
themselves "the third wave" are confronting
these and other thorny issues. While many women may still
be hesitant to call themselves "feminist" because
of the ever-present backlash, few would give up the legacy
of personal freedoms and expanded opportunities women
have won over the last 150 years. Whatever choices we
make for our own lives, most of us envision a world for
our daughters, nieces and granddaughters where all girls
and women will have the opportunity to develop their unique
skills and talents and pursue their dreams.
1998: Living the Legacy
In the 150 years since that first,
landmark Women's Rights Convention, women have made clear
progress in the areas addressed by Elizabeth Cady Stanton
in her revolutionary Declaration of Sentiments. Not only
have women won the right to vote; we are being elected
to public office at all levels of government. Jeannette
Rankin was the first woman elected to Congress, in 1916.
By 1971, three generations later, women were still less
than three percent of our congressional representatives.
Today women hold only 11% of the seats in Congress, and
21% of the state legislative seats. Yet, in the face of
such small numbers, women have successfully changed thousands
of local, state, and federal laws that had limited women's
legal status and social roles.
In the world of work, large numbers
of women have entered the professions, the trades, and
businesses of every kind. We have opened the ranks of
the clergy, the military, the newsroom. More than three
million women now work in occupations considered "nontraditional"
until very recently.
We've accomplished so much, yet
a lot still remains to be done. Substantial barriers to
the full equality of America's women still remain before
our freedom as a Nation can be called complete. But the
Women's Rights Movement has clearly been successful in
irrevocably changing the circumstances and hopes of women.
The remaining injustices are being tackled daily in the
courts and conference rooms, the homes and organizations,
workplaces and playing fields of America.
Women and girls today are living
the legacy of women's rights that seven generations of
women before us have given their best to achieve. Alice
Paul, that intrepid organizer who first wrote out the
Equal Rights Amendment in 1923, said, "I always feel
the movement is sort of a mosaic. Each of us puts in one
little stone, and then you get a great mosaic at the end."
Women, acting together, adding their small stones to the
grand mosaic, have increased their rights against all
odds, nonviolently, from an initial position of powerlessness.
We have a lot to be proud of in this heroic legacy, and
a great deal to celebrate on the occasion of the 150th
Anniversary of the founding of the Women's Rights Movement.
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