Recently, ERA-NC Alliance co-president Lori Bunton and former co-president, Roberta Madden, were interviewed by Judith Langowski, a transatlantic media fellow reporting on issues in the United States for Der Tagesspiegel, Berlin’s largest daily paper. One of the topics she is researching is the fight for the ERA. She wants to show Tagesspiegel readers the richness and persistence of women’s movements in the US, and their decades-long coalition-building efforts. The story was published earlier this fall, as the election brought more attention to US political topics in general. Below is Lori’s translation from the original German.
The Century Project: Equal Rights Amendment: Are women finally getting equal rights in the US constitution?
“Men and women should have equal rights.” To this day, this sentence is not in the US Constitution. Under President Trump of all times, the initiative for the additional article flared up again.
October 27, 2020 By Judith Langowski
Roberta Madden’s eyes flash resolutely behind her glasses. “I’m 83 years old and I still want to see it come into force!” For the video conversation, she wears a green button with the slogan “ERA YES”, the abbreviation for “Equal Rights Amendment”. Books and documents pile up on the floor-to-ceiling shelves behind Madden. She lives in North Carolina in a small town in the Appalachian Mountains. Together with a feminist researcher, she is currently writing her biography. For Roberta Madden is campaigning for the “ERA”, an addition to the U.S. Constitution. If the amendment comes into effect, it is intended to guarantee equal rights to all, whether it is equal pay or protection against sexual harassment. This year, the movement is closer to its goal than ever, despite Donald Trump in the White House and a Republican-led Senate. But how realistic is it that Madden’s hopes come true?” It’s a long-term project,” she says. The battle shows the perseverance of the women’s movement. As early as 1923, the Suffragette and Representative Alice Paul introduced equality in a simple sentence in the US Congress that guarantees equal rights for all, regardless of their gender: “Equality of rights before the law must not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any state on the basis of sex.”
But it took over 50 years until 1972, by mobilizing the “second wave “of feminists, a large majority of legislators agreed to the principle of equality. Then the actual work began: 38 states had to ratify the ERA for it to apply in the Constitution. This ratification process has become a catalyst for a professionally organized feminist movement. In the late 1960s and early 1970s, grassroots groups emerged as nationwide lobbying groups, such as the National Organization for Women. Women like Roberta Madden, then in her mid-thirties, campaigned for ratification. With Simone de Beauvoir’s “The Opposite Sex” as a basic reading, Madden organized a campaign among female students in Louisiana. At the time, she thought it was easy. “We were so naive!”, she says today. Nearly 50 years later, and neither Louisiana nor North Carolina have ratified.
Not all women liked the ERA. A strong conservative movement, led by activist Phyllis Schlafly, opposed it. She argued that if the amendment were to come into force, women would lose their privileges. They would not receive maintenance under a divorce, would have to use the same toilets as men and, in the event of a war, would have to serve as soldiers. The latter justification was a striking argument at the time of the Vietnam War
On the other hand, the ERA was promised as a panacea against discrimination. “But even in the 1970s, black feminists in particular criticized this focus,” says Katherine Turk, a historian at the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill. The critics of the ERA found that other issues given short shrift, which were especially important for the black population, such as the right to education, equality in the job and in the housing market. So, the ERA movement has particularly shaped white feminists, says Turk.
The biggest divisive issue then as now: abortion. In 1973, the Supreme Court made the landmark decision in “Roe versus Wade” and set the right to privacy over the prohibition of abortion.” Opponents feared that abortion could even be funded by the state,” Turk said. The anti-ERA movement gained momentum during the wave of ratification. In 1982, the deadline by which to be ratified expired. Three states were still missing. The movement was at its end, it seemed.
But under Donald Trump, who was elected president in 2016 on the basis of a misogynistic and xenophobic campaign, the mobilization campaign rekindled. “Suddenly there was a man in power who would no longer protect her “rights,” Democratic Congresswoman Carolyn Maloney explains the revival. One whose program was based on the erosion of these rights.” Maloney has represented her New York constituency in Congress since 1992 and has been fighting for the ERA since then. In January 2017, the Women’s March brought more than three million people onto the streets, mostly women. In the 2018 midterm elections, a record number of women were elected to the U.S. Congress. In 2017, Nevada ratified the ERA, in 2018 Illinois and in January 2020 finally Virginia as the last necessary,38th. State. In fact, the ERA was supposed to be integrated into the Constitution with the ratification of Virginia, as the 28th. Amendment. But some hurdles, including a legal battle over the 1981 deadline, and the Senate, led by Republican hardliner Mitch McConnell, are still standing in the way of the ERA. . A lot of time has passed since Roberta Madden was a student in Louisiana. She says she has learned that she is “more or less acting in patriarchy.” It is fortunate that there are men in Congress who are on the side of the ERA. “We need both men and women,” she says. “We don’t want a constitutional amendment for women. We want to end discrimination.” The election on 3 November therefore also sets the course for equality. There are some laws that govern the state and federal levels, and 25 states have their own ERAs. But: “The interpretation of the law depends on who is in power. Of concern in this reelection is the ideology of the president and the Supreme Court,” says historian Katherine Turk. The death of Chief Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Trump’s nomination of conservative Justice Amy Coney Barrett to succeed him currently show how much equality depends on the power of individuals. “Only if we are constitutionally equal as women are our rights really protected,” says Representative Carolyn Maloney. She suspects that no matter what the dispute over the constitutional principle is, it will eventually be decided in the Supreme Court. “And it will be much easier for us if Joe Biden is elected.”
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