Subscribe to Common Dreams News Updates
Most Popular This Week
Popular content
Today's Top News
Women's Equality Day: Time for Constitutional Guarantee of Women's Rights
WASHINGTON - As students return to school this week, many will open their history books to learn that 90 years ago today women were given the right to vote when the 19th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution was signed into law. The history books will explain how this event began to radically transform the role of women in our society. Today, women have more opportunities than ever before. For the first time, more women attend and graduate college than men, and women now make up half the workforce.
1970's ERA Yes Pinback In recent years we have witnessed Nancy
Pelosi become the first woman elected Speaker of the House of
Representatives; we've seen Hillary Clinton come closer to winning a
major party nomination for president of the United States than any woman
before her; and now, for the first time, we have three sitting female
U.S. Supreme Court justices. Despite these historic milestones, women
are still denied the one thing that would make us truly equal to men --
equal protection of the law, which all men receive thanks to the 14th
Amendment.
"When history books and the media celebrate women's successful fight for the right to vote, they often imply that women now have constitutional equality," says NOW President Terry O'Neill. "The fact is, sex discrimination against women is not unconstitutional, and statues prohibiting it have no constitutional foundation. It is time to write women into the Constitution by ratifying the Equal Rights Amendment."
The Equal Rights Amendment, or ERA, was drafted by suffragist leader Alice Paul and introduced in Congress in 1923 to fix the deficiency of the 14th Amendment by providing the constitutional foundation that women have equal protection under the law. The ERA passed Congress in 1972 but failed to be ratified by three-quarters of the state legislatures. Every year since 1982, the ERA has been reintroduced in Congress and repeatedly shot down. Opposition to it has been consistent and vitriolic.
"For far too long this nation has deprived women of a constitutional guarantee of equality," says O'Neill. "But our progress has clouded this fact. We must educate women that they do not have the same rights as men in this country. We must work together to re-ignite a movement of advocates who refuse to accept second-class status for women."
We can start by calling on our representatives at the state and federal level to advance the ERA. Last July, Rep. Carolyn Maloney (D-N.Y.) and Rep. Judy Biggert (R-Ill.) sponsored the reintroduction of the ERA, and more and more states are considering ratifying it. Women can do their part by voting in 2010. We must vote for candidates who believe that equality is a basic human right -- candidates who believe in reproductive freedom, who support equal rights for lesbian/gay/bisexual/transgendered people, who are dedicated to eliminating racism and violence, who promote economic justice, and who believe that women must be included in the U.S. Constitution. Only then can we achieve equality for all.
5 Comments so far
Show All> We must educate women that they do not have the same rights > as men in this country.
That's a good start. Men have certain rights that women lack and women have certain rights that men lack. Let's fix that divide, shall we?
> Women can do their part by voting in 2010. We must vote
> for candidates who believe that equality is a basic human
> right -- candidates who believe in reproductive freedom,
> who support equal rights for lesbian/gay/bisexual
> /transgendered people, who are dedicated to eliminating
> racism and violence, who promote economic justice, and who
> believe that women must be included in the U.S.
> Constitution.
The ERA passed 2/3 in the Congress but failed to gain the required 3/4 support from the states. Shouldn't women be paying attention to their elections on state legislators too?
The ERA faced opposition from women's union members fearing that ERA would cancel out protective labor laws for women. Women joining the elite professions favored it while women joining the industrial sector opposed ERA. The ERA has also faced opposition due to abortion proponents using ERA to justify abortion. Children and fetuses have feelings too and abortion is a distraction issue. Still, just get ERA passed but keep the abortion proponents and elite professionals from using ERA for its own agenda.
The Amendment should be all inclusive; we the people.
I'm all for equality. Even so and even if I agree with the Equal Rights Amendment, in my view, a critical priority at this time--particularly in light of the Citizens United ruling--is to insist on the passage of the Fair Elections Now Act which would get corporate money out of political campaigns. Once that is achieved, lots more possibilities and potential solutions open up--for women, too. Innumerable problems can be solved and suffering can be ameliorated once legislators return to working for the people instead of corporate funders.
No harm in doing both --
both are "critical" --
"According to all myth, the female - not the male -- gives life"
Voting in a female Speaker of the House, the second most powerful person in elected government has not worked out well, has it?
Voting in a black shill as president did not work out too well, did it?
Having a black Attorney General has not worked out too well, either?
All the above are corporate shills; black, white, male or female, voting does not matter. This is class war. Marx was right.
Take the credibility from the political system, don't vote, and tell people why.