There Are Two Sides to Equality
Since 1923, activists have been working in the United States to pass the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA).
American suffragist, feminist, and women’s rights activist Alice Stokes Paul devoted her life to securing equal rights for all women.
She was a different type of activist having returned from England in 1910 where she had gone to do her postgraduate studies and perform settlement work. There she studied and copied the British suffragists.
Alice formed the National Woman’s Party in 1916. The party’s headquarters was located directly across the street from the White House.
She mobilized her Woman’s Party to battle for one goal.
Alice led the fight demanding women the right to vote on the federal rather than at the state or local level. She organized marches, rallies, and silent protests in front of White House to garner support in securing the measure. Within six months, during the summer of 1917, police had arrested more than 200 women for blocking traffic. For her aggressiveness in the fight for women suffrage, Alice was arrested and imprisoned on three occasions before the passage of the 19th Amendment in 1919 and its ratification in 1920.
The vote was only the first step in Alice’s bold strategy.
In yet another unflinching move, Alice led the fight for another constitutional amendment guaranteeing women the right to complete equality before the law.
She along with Crystal Eastman, an American lawyer, journalist, and co-founder of the American Civil Liberties Union were two of the authors who drafted and proposed the first Equal Rights Amendment to Congress in 1923.
It states, “Equality of rights under the law shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any state on account of sex.”
In her remarks, Alice sounded a call that has pathos and consequence more than 80 years later. “If we keep on this way they will be celebrating the 150th anniversary of the 1848 Convention without being much further advanced in equal rights than we are. . . . If we had not concentrated on the Federal Amendment, we should be working today for suffrage… We shall not be safe until the principle of equal rights is written into the framework of our government.”
Feminists of the late 1960s and early 1970s saw the ratification of the amendment as the only clear-cut way to eliminate all legal gender-based discrimination in the United States.
The Equal Rights Amendment remains as pertinent today as it was when Congress passed it and sent it to the states for approval on March 22, 1972, for ratification within seven years.
Thirty-five states ratified the ERA by 1977. Three more were needed to complete the process. It never happened.
The momentum of the campaign came to a halt when Phyllis Schlafly, a constitutional lawyer, and conservative political activist led a “STOP ERA” campaign. She argued the ERA would, among other things, disadvantage “housewives” and the military would begin drafting women into service.
Congress responded by extending the deadline for ratification to June 30, 1982, but again, time ran out.
Advocates of the ERA have been reviving the campaign arguing that deadline was invalid if three states decided to ratify it. In 2017, Nevada became the 36th state to do so. That leaves two to go.
Currently, the Illinois state senate voted 43-12 to approve it. It’s now up to the Illinois House to bring about this long overdue change. That’s thirty-six years since Illinois chose not to vote to ratify the amendment.
But that still wouldn’t ensure the amendment’s passage.
What is it about giving affirmation that discrimination against women is wrong?
Many of the National Federation of Press Women members were active in the cause as their states sought ratification of the amendment in the 1970s and 80s. Their generation made significant strides, and we have seen some changes in the law.
Although Alice did not live to see the ERA amendment pass before her death in 1977, she did get an equal rights affirmation in the preamble to the United Nations charter.
Since that time we’ve been treading water.
Today, in the United States, women make up roughly half of our country’s workforce. Most do not realize they are not equal to men under our current constitution.
According to the Brookings Institution, significant “gaps remain between men and women in employment rates, the jobs they hold, the wages they earn, and their overall economic security.”
It’s now the era of #MeToo and Time’s Up.
Are we still arguing and fighting for full equality?
What would Alice say?