One Hundred Years of Women Debating the Equal Rights Amendment
An Anthology, 1923–2023
Summary
In contrast to narratives that begin with passage of the Nineteenth Amendment and then propel us forward to the 1970s, this edited collection of primary texts comprehensively surveys women’s arguments about the ERA from its inception through the present day. Together and apart, these texts reveal the nuanced, complicated, and sometimes contradictory ways that women have contemplated the question of whether we need the ERA. As this next generation forges ahead to keep the ERA alive, we are left to wonder: Will women remain divided on the ERA? Will it take another century to see it enshrined in the U.S. Constitution? The ERA debate, nevertheless, persists
Excerpt
Table Of Contents
- Cover
- Advance Praise
- Title
- Copyright
- About the editors
- About the book
- This eBook can be cited
- Dedication
- Table of Contents
- Acknowledgments
- Abbreviations
- Introduction: A Rhetorical History of the Equal Rights Amendment Debate
- Section I The Debate Begins: 1923–1939
- An Approaching Anniversary (Alice Paul)
- I Am Opposed to the So-Called Blanket Equality Bill (Carrie Chapman Catt)
- The Trickery of Words (Ethel M. Smith)
- Equality or Protection (Crystal Eastman)
- The Health of the Race (Lavinia Lloyd Dock)
- Whose Rights Are to Be Equal? (Florence Kelley)
- The Principle of Liberty for Men and Women (Anita Pollitzer)
- All Women Must Wake Up (Grace Hoffman White)
- There Is No Single Formula for Equality (Edith Valet Cook)
- Section II The Debate Expands: 1940–1959
- On Account of Sex (Jeannette Marks)
- The Legislative Front: The Equal Rights Amendment (Dorothy Kelso Funn)
- Why We Need the Equal Rights Amendment (Mary Church Terrell)
- Those Great Pioneers of 1848 (Nora Barney)
- The Danger of This Generalization (Maida Springer Kemp)
- The “Un-Equal” Rights Amendment (Rebecca Stiles Taylor)
- Democracy Is Fighting for Its Very Life (Caroline Katzenstein)
- The Phony Equal Rights Amendment Again (Elizabeth Gurley Flynn)
- There Is No Short Road to Freedom (Dorothy Kenyon)
- Equality: Nothing More, Nothing Less (Katharine St. George)
- Section III The Debate Shifts: 1960–1971
- Women Under the Law (President’s Commission on the Status of Women)
- We Should Not Compromise: We Must Pioneer (Betty Friedan)
- Prejudice Against Women Is Still Acceptable (Shirley Chisholm)
- Gentlemen, Women Are Enraged (Aileen Hernandez)
- Nature Cannot Be Amended (Betty Finegan)
- We Are Tired of Being the Silenced Majority (Gladys O’Donnell)
- I Am Not Sure the Equal Rights Amendment Is Necessary (Sandra Day O’Connor)
- Equal Power and Responsibility for Women (Pauli Murray)
- The Price of Inequality Is High Indeed (Bella Abzug)
- Section IV The Debate Splits: 1972–1982
- Republican Support of Equal Opportunity (Pat Nixon)
- I Was Opposed to ERA (Addie Wyatt)
- The Mini-Amendment with Maxi-Consequences (Beneth Peters Jones)
- Ladies! Have You Heard? (Lottie Beth Hobbs)
- Receive the Gift Bestowed (Barbara B. Smith)
- La Chicana and “Women’s Liberation” (Yolanda Orozco)
- The Bible and the Equal Rights Amendment (Virginia Ramey Mollenkott)
- Womankind (Barbara Jordan)
- The Power of the Positive Woman (Phyllis Stewart Schlafly)
- The Cause of Justice and Sisterhood Will Triumph at Last (Patsy Mink)
- Declaration of Dependence (Elisabeth Elliot)
- La Década de la Mujer (Marta Sotomayor)
- There Is No Time Limit (Midge Costanza)
- Black Women Have a Right to Be Properly Informed (Dorothy Height)
- The Patriarchal Panic (Sonia Johnson)
- I Am Not Threatened by ERA (Rosalynn Carter)
- Reverence for Life Means Reverence for Equality (Maureen Fiedler)
- The Legal Consequence of ERA on Indian Women (Ethel Krepps)
- Section V The Debate Continues: 1983–2015
- We Must Ask Them (Gloria Steinem)
- The ERA Will Strengthen National Defense (Antonia Handler Chayes)
- We Want to Create an All-Girls Network (Irene Natividad)
- I Remain an Advocate of the Equal Rights Amendment (Ruth Bader Ginsburg)
- The Grand and General Language of ERA (Paige Comstock Cunningham)
- To Be a Feminist Means To Be Pro-Life (Ileana Ros-Lehtinen)
- Memo on the Equal Rights Amendment 2000 (Eagle Forum)
- Equal Justice Under the Law (Carolyn Maloney)
- It’s Not Here (Terry O’Neill)
- Supporting the Equal Rights Amendment (Tina Tchen)
- Section VI The Debate Persists: 2016–2023
- We All Must Persist (Pat Spearman)
- The Conservative Case for the Equal Rights Amendment (Michelle Quist)
- Feminists Should Ask Tough Questions about ERA (Valerie M. Hudson)
- It’s Time, Finally, to Adopt the Equal Rights Amendment (Sylvia Garcia)
- Bring It On (Jennifer Carroll Foy)
- The ERA Can’t Be Defeated by Anti-Trans Scare Tactics (Danica Roem and Kate Kelly)
- I Urge My Colleagues to Vote “No” (Vicky Hartzler)
- The Unfulfilled Promise (Nancy Pelosi)
- We Follow in Their Footsteps (Ayanna Pressley)
- Index
Acknowledgments
If someone were to ask either of us to describe the process of completing this book, we agree that the word “joyful” best captures the experience. Our work began during the early months of the coronavirus pandemic in 2020. Like those who we write about in the introduction, we locked down, reconfigured our classes into remote offerings, binge-watched Mrs. America, and talked about the show with friends, family, students, and—importantly—each other. Out of those conversations came an idea that blossomed into this collaboration, which provided a bright spot as we navigated the new challenges posed by the pandemic.
Elizabeth Howard at Peter Lang championed this project from our earliest conversations. We are indebted to her and her team for exemplifying steadfast support, swift responsiveness, and sound advice in shepherding this manuscript through revision and publication. We also thank Tim and Joanna Smolko for their editorial help and enthusiastic support of our work.
Given the restrictions on in-person travel during the pandemic, archivists invaluably aided us as we brought our ideas to fruition. They did so under difficult and unprecedented conditions, yet generously responded to our queries and helped us to remotely acquire many of the texts we have included. Readers will find acknowledgments for archives and archivists within the notations of entries.
We also have individual thanks to offer.
Melody: This book would not exist were it not for wise teachers, mentors, and advocates. At Furman University, courses in the Women’s Studies (now Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies) program opened my eyes to new ways of seeing, thinking, and knowing. I am profoundly grateful to Savita Nair, Lynne Shackelford, Elizabeth Smith, Courtney Tollison, Victoria Turgeon, and Diane Vecchio for their indelible impact on my professional trajectory. In Sean O’Rourke’s classroom, I first encountered the study of women’s speeches and found my vocational calling amid uncertainty about what to do with my life. At the University of Memphis, Janann Sherman taught me that women’s histories matter if we are to understand the significance of their rhetorical choices, while Sandy Sarkela’s commitment to recovering women’s speeches endures in my classroom and across the pages of this book. In this vein, Jamie Capuzza, Wanda Fenimore, and Lori Stallings have served as incredible sounding boards who share the view that recovering and circulating women’s rhetoric matters.
My Sewanee students are an inspiration for this book. A special thanks to Anna Day and Quinn Needham, who continued conversations about women’s rhetoric and the ERA long after they left my classroom. I also thank Quinn, Nellie Fagan, and Pate Simmons for the kind invitation to participate for their “Feminist Fiends and Quarantine Queens” podcast, which focused on the Mrs. America episode “Phyllis.” Preparing to “spill the tea” in this interview prompted me to more closely examine how the show represented the ERA debate.
My partner Adam Hawkins showed me kindness when I initially interviewed at Sewanee. That kindness now infuses our beautiful life together. I am especially grateful for his care and understanding during my mother’s illness, which gave me much-needed time to complete this manuscript. I also wish to thank Karen Hawkins, Jerry Collins, Lois Stuller, Conrad Hawkins, and Stacey Chapman for welcoming me into the fold.
Finally, I thank my dear friend and co-editor Camille Lewis. We have known each other for more than 25 years, tracing back to our (okay, my) denim jumper days in church choir. It is nothing short of miraculous that we came together in a shared vision to imagine and complete this book. I am proud and grateful to know you.
Camille: My parents, Hank and Lorraine Kaminski, regularly affirmed my humanity and my own intellectual autonomy—a radical act within our conservative Evangelical world. My older brother Steve was my first academic colleague, showing me long before college how words powerfully create worlds. I could not imagine this book and the questions it asks without them.
When I attended the ultra-fundamentalist Bob Jones University, any assertions of my autonomy were met with skepticism, except with my teacher, DeWitt Jones. He had been Steve’s teacher, too, and he cultivated the same intellectual curiosity my family had begun. When he mentioned to me in my Master’s program—“There’s a book you should see. It’s all early feminist arguments, Man Cannot Speak for Her. Here. Take my copy.”—I was hooked. American women of faith could effectively and logically assert their rights in the public sphere. For Dr. Jones, I am thankful.
My professors at Indiana University deepened and broadened that intellectual inquiry. Those graduate school conversations with John Lucaites, Robert Ivie, Robert Terrell, James Andrews, and J. Michael Hogan are all woven throughout this book. After graduation, in the ups and downs of post-doc life, many colleagues have supported me—sometimes arguing, sometimes cheering, always encouraging. Gary Weier, Daniel Brown, David Worthington, Alena Ruggerio, Marty Medhurst, Elesha Coffman, Theon Hill, Darrel Wanzer-Serrano, Deborah Breede, and Wanda Little Fenimore, thank you.
I will always appreciate the collegial and uplifting friendship of my current Furman colleagues. I’ve been chattering about the Equal Rights Amendment for months now, and they are consistently affirming and optimistic. This book would not have been possible without their help and support. From Jeffrey Makala and Nashieli Marcano in the archives, to my cohort of Judith Williams and Kaniqua Robinson and Tuğçe Kayaal, your patience and expertise are invaluable. Janice Rowe patiently helped me through the trenches of the minutiae. Adam Richards, Brandon Inabinet, Cynthia King, Selena Dickey, Alyson Farzad-Phillips, Mai Xiong-Gum, Mary Sturgill, and Mac McArthur—thank you all for listening to my frustrations, critiquing my nascent ideas, answering my questions, and imagining the possibilities with me. You all are gracious and kind, and I will be forever thankful for each of you.
As I was digging and reading and writing, my students—past and present and future—have been nearby. As I see the sparkle of activism in my current Furman students, I am thankful for your persistence, your questions, and your creativity. My personal friends are part of this too. Ruth and Bryant Burroughs, Marcie and Jason Yon, and Josh and Kim Guilliams listened to my frustrations and prayed through them with me. Ruth Buchanan was an always-enthusiastic coach, reminding me of the marathon of book-writing. And Ruthie Hawkins, Joanna Smolko, Lisa Kraus, Jeannette Jones, and Rachel Lilly kept me on task with daily reminders and nudges and, of course, memes.
My sons Isaac and Gavin were my incredulous audience when I first mentioned this book idea. “What?!” they said, “that hasn’t passed yet! Why not?” For you and yours, I want to document the possibilities of rhetorical strategies for your own activism. And my darling husband and ever-present sounding board, Grant, you’ve been alongside, through thick and thin, always listening, always discerning, and always supporting. You are my delight.
Melody, who would have thought that the first soprano on the front row and the second soprano in the back could ever get together in such a happy, not-really-musical way? You’re a thoughtful and careful scholar with boundless enthusiasm. I’m honored to join with you in this book. You are a queen.
Abbreviations
- AAUW
- American Association of University Women
- ACLU
- American Civil Liberties Union
- AFL-CIO
- American Federation of Labor and Congress of Industrial Organizations
- ASCE
- American Society of Civil Engineers
- AUAM
- American Union Against Militarism
- AWSA
- American Woman Suffrage Association
- BPWC
- National Federation of Business and Professional Women’s Clubs
- CEA
- Constitutional Equality Amendment
- CWA
- Concerned Women for America
- CWC
- Congressional Women’s Caucus
- EEOC
- Equal Employment Opportunity Commission
- ERA
- Equal Rights Amendment
- FMF
- Feminist Majority Foundation
- GFWC
- General Federation of Women’s Clubs
- ILGWU
- International Ladies’ Garment Workers’ Union
- IWW
- Industrial Workers of the World
- JBS
- John Birch Society
- LDS
- Latter-day Saints
- LWV
- League of Women Voters
- NAACP
- National Association for the Advancement of Colored People
- NACW
- National Association of Colored Women
- NAWSA
- National American Woman Suffrage Association
- NCDURA
- National Committee to Defeat the Un-Equal Rights Amendment
- NCL
- National Consumers’ League
- NCLR
- National Council of La Raza
- NCNW
- National Council of Negro Women
- NFRW
- National Federation of Republican Women
- NNC
- National Negro Congress
- NOW
- National Organization for Women
- NWP
- National Woman’s Party
- NWPC
- National Women’s Political Caucus
- NWSA
- National Woman Suffrage Association
- PCSW
- President’s Commission on the Status of Women
- UPWA
- United Packinghouse Workers of America
- VAWA
- Violence Against Women Act
- VMI
- Virginia Military Institute
- WEAL
- Women’s Equity Action League
- WPP
- Women’s Peace Party
- WTUL
- Women’s Trade Union League
- YWCA
- Young Women’s Christian Association
Introduction: A Rhetorical History of the Equal Rights Amendment Debate
The limited FX series Mrs. America debuted in April 2020 on the streaming service Hulu as an ambitious and, many would argue, long-overdue attempt to portray the contest over the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA) in the 1970s and early 1980s. Actress Cate Blanchett tackled the role of Phyllis Schlafly, the conservative firebrand and the ERA’s best-known opponent. Among the ensemble cast was Sarah Paulson as the fictional housewife Alice Macray, a conflicted Schlafly ally whose character arc personifies a growing disenchantment with the militant opposition to both the ERA and the broader women’s rights movement.1
Mrs. America arrived at a particularly salient cultural moment. Donald Trump’s meteoric political rise in the Republican Party, despite his well-documented record of misogynistic language and behavior, mobilized women to rise up in protest, form a resistance, and run for political office in record numbers.2 For those women and men hoping to better understand the threat to women’s rights that Trump’s election posed, Mrs. America provided much-needed historical context relevant to the present day. The series’ release also coincided with the emergence of the global COVID-19 pandemic. Americans were stuck at home in a national lockdown as elected officials deployed stay-at-home orders, sick citizens went into quarantine, workers shifted to remote work, and students departed from their school campuses. House-bound viewers with more time than usual on their hands welcomed the escapism provided by the promise of new episodes each week. By the time that Hulu released the fourth episode, “Betty,” viewers were consuming an average of 38 hours a week of “lockdown TV”—including Mrs. America, which went on to earn several awards as one of the most-watched series of the year.3
Although Mrs. America’s showrunner Dahvi Waller sought to “humanize the women on both sides of the [ERA] debate,” those portrayed on the show nonetheless voiced concerns about the final product.4 Phyllis Schlafly’s daughter Anne Schlafly Cori took issue with the representation of her mother, accused the show’s creators of depicting conservative women as “racists,” and speculated that the show’s politically motivated creators sought to resurrect the ERA in the twenty-first century.5 In response, Schlafly’s still-active Eagle Forum posted a series of YouTube videos to tell “The Truth Behind Mrs. America.” The website mrsamerica.org launched to further disparage the series and revive Phyllis Schlafly, who died in September 2016, as a venerable conservative icon for a new generation.6 Right-wing pundits at Breitbart chimed in to suggest that the show’s attempts to ridicule Schlafly backfired and that pro-ERA feminists came across as “radical” and “shallow backstabbers.”7 Pundits at Breitbart—as well as other right-wing outlets such as The Federalist and the online blog for the Concerned Women for America—attacked the show’s creators for assuming an improperly biased stance against Schlafly and other conservatives, and for “inventing facts” about what really happened among those debating the ERA during this period.8 A statement from the Clare Boothe Luce Center for Conservative Women chastened Hulu for creating a show that “viciously malign[ed] Mrs. Schlafly because she was not the leftwing ideologue feminists demand from the women they support”—an expected though ironic critique, since the organization’s namesake worked with Alice Paul, marched for the ERA, and was one of the earliest Congresswomen to support the amendment.9
Anti-ERA conservatives and Schlafly allies were not the only critics of the series. Ms. Magazine founder Gloria Steinem and former National Organization for Women President Eleanor Smeal co-authored an editorial for the Los Angeles Times outlining a somewhat related set of concerns about what they called the “misinformation” perpetuated by the series. The creators of Mrs. America contacted Steinem early in the production process to invite her input. But after reading the initial scripts, Steinem declined to participate because she felt the series “comes off as a catfight among women rather than a battle between the ERA and economic interests.” Smeal, in turn, worried that the heavy focus on Schlafly and other ERA opponents created a “false premise” that understated how widespread support for the amendment really was, particularly among women of color.10 Some commentators agreed with Smeal that Mrs. America sidelined non-white ERA supporters. Alessa Dominguez of Buzzfeed News observed that “the fight over the ERA is represented as a conflict primarily between white middle-class women (like Schlafly and her supporters) and white celebrity feminists.”11 Notwithstanding the abundance of reviews that deemed Mrs. America “must-see television,” Linda Holmes of NPR summed up the overarching critique that took hold among both pro- and anti-ERA factions alike: “there is something not quite complete about it.”12
As educators who teach courses in women’s rhetoric, persuasion, and argument, we watched Mrs. America with several questions in mind—questions not specifically raised by the show’s supporters and critics, but which are related to their observations about the show’s inevitable limitations. These questions are guided by our belief that, as Carole Spitzack and Kathryn Carter put it, “rhetoric can be studied not by asking if women say anything important, or if there are any great women speakers, but by asking what women say, how women use the public platform, how women speak.”13 Accordingly, we wondered: what did the ERA’s supporters and opponents actually say? How did they argue for their positions? How did those positions and arguments develop over time? What evidence did they use? Did they ever change their minds about the proposed amendment and if so, why? Who were their listeners? What barriers to speaking did they encounter and navigate? And as to the important questions of representation, inclusion, and accuracy raised by the show’s critics—who was included and excluded in the conversation, and why?
One Hundred Years of Women Debating the Equal Rights Amendment: An Anthology, 1923–2023 begins to answer these questions. December 13, 2023, marked the one-hundred-year anniversary of the ERA’s14 first introduction in Congress. The time is ripe for revisiting how women across generations have argued that gender equality will reshape and reimagine our democracy if enshrined in the United States Constitution. Ours is an edited collection of primary texts debating the ERA over the past century.15 Historian Elizabeth Novara emphasizes that “the discourse during the first few decades after the amendment’s introduction showcases the differing viewpoints held by labor feminists, African American women, and various women’s organizations at that time.”16 Thus, in contrast to narratives that begin with passage of the Nineteenth Amendment and then propel us forward to the 1970s, this volume recovers and surveys women’s arguments around the ERA from its inception through the present day. Together and apart, these texts reveal the nuanced, complicated, and sometimes contradictory ways that women have contemplated the question of whether we need an Equal Rights Amendment.
The ERA Debate as Rhetorical History
This collection treats the ERA debate as a multifaceted public controversy where many voices over an extended period of time have made arguments, tested claims, proffered evidence, defended positions, issued refutations, offered remedies for misunderstanding,17 and called upon audiences to collectively think and act in certain ways about the proposed amendment. Our critical approach is what Kathleen J. Turner calls “rhetorical history”: that is, we seek “to understand the context [of the debate] through messages that reflect and construct that context.”18 Rhetorical history, in this sense, reflects what David Zarefsky describes as “the study of historical events from a rhetorical perspective.” It is an inquiry into “history as a series of rhetorical problems [and] situations that call for public persuasion to advance a cause or overcome an impasse.”19 The longevity and public attention surrounding the ERA debate make it especially well-suited for a rhetorical history project. This perspective excavates and catalogs primary texts about the Equal Rights Amendment that illuminate yet also disrupt the accepted wisdom about women’s rhetorical contributions to the debate. And while this collection cannot be an exhaustive account of “the conflicting rhetorical worlds” co-created by the ERA’s supporting, opposing, and undecided voices for the past one hundred years, it does offer a starting point that will invite engagement and, we hope, inspire further investigation into this enduring, multigenerational rhetorical struggle.20
The longevity of the controversy is not the only reason why the ERA debate is well-suited for a rhetorical history project. Debating the ERA has long provided women with a “route to rhetorical authority” on matters that affect their lives and the lives of their fellow citizens.21 As legal scholar Julie C. Suk observes, if the Equal Rights Amendment is ever added to the U.S. Constitution, it would become “the only piece of our nation’s fundamental law that was written by women after suffrage, adopted by women leading the way in Congress, given meaning by women lawyers and judges, and ratified by women lawmakers in state legislatures of the twenty-first century.”22 American women rhetors initiated and drove the ERA debate for more than a century—and they are still going. The very possibility of an Equal Rights Amendment provided an exigence for some of these women to publicly speak—and to claim the right to publicly speak—in the first place. In fact, many of the women in this volume devoted the greater part of their lives to seeing the amendment succeed or fail.
Details
- Pages
- XLII, 382
- Publication Year
- 2024
- ISBN (PDF)
- 9781636675022
- ISBN (ePUB)
- 9781636675039
- ISBN (Hardcover)
- 9781636675053
- ISBN (Softcover)
- 9781636675046
- DOI
- 10.3726/b22067
- Language
- English
- Publication date
- 2024 (November)
- Keywords
- Women’s rhetoric Political debate Public controversies Equal Rights Amendment Equal Rights Feminism Women’s equality Racial equality Constitutional equality Political equality Gender and the law
- Published
- New York, Berlin, Bruxelles, Chennai, Lausanne, Oxford, 2024. XLII, 382 pp.
- Product Safety
- Peter Lang Group AG