Rejecting Gender-Free Equality, 1977

From Phyllis Schlafly. The Power of the Positive Woman. New Rochelle, NY: Arlington House Publishers, 1977. 68-71.

The Positive Woman will never fall into the trap of adopting gender-free equality in theory or in practice. The Positive Woman builds her power by using her womanhood, not by denying or suppressing it. The Positive Woman wants to be treated like a woman, not like a man, and certainly not like a sex-neutral "person."

The primary legislative goal of the women's liberationists is ratification of an amendment to the United States Constitution that reads in full as follows:

Section 1: Equality of rights under the law shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of sex.

Section 2: The Congress shall have the power to enforce, by appropriate legislation, the provisions of this article.

Section 3: This amendment shall take effect two years after the date of ratification.

The fundamental error of the Equal Rights Amendment, or ERA, is that it will mandate the gender-free, rigid, absolute equality of treatment of men and women under every federal and state law, bureaucratic regulation, and court decision, and in every aspect of our lives that is touched directly or indirectly by public funding. This is what the militant women's liberationists want and are working for with passionate and persistent determination.

The Positive Woman opposes ERA because she knows it would be hurtful to women, to men, to children, to the family, to local self-government, and to society as a whole.

Pro-ERA speakers go up and down the country reciting a tiresome litany of obsolete complaints about women, not being able to serve on juries, and not being admitted to law or medical schools. All those past discriminations were remedied years ago, or decades ago, or even generations ago. They have no relevance to present-day America. Pro-ERA speakers paint a picture of American women in "serfdom," treated like "chattel" and trampled on as "second-class citizens," and then offer the Equal Rights Amendment as the remedy for an alleged oppression that exists only in their distorted minds.

Some pro-ERA speakers even claim that the United States Constitution does not treat women as "persons." The facts are clear that the United States Supreme Court back in 1875 in the case of Minor v. Happersett specifically declared that women are "persons" as well as "citizens" under the Constitution, including the Fourteenth Amendment, entitled to all the rights and privileges of persons and citizens except the right to vote-and women received that right in 1920 under the Nineteenth Amendment.

In July, 1976, thirty-five women's magazines--including those with respectable reputations, women's liberationist journals such as Ms., those that feature the "true confession" type of sensationalism, and pornographic publications--published articles on ERA. Most were blatantly pro-ERA.

Redbook, the magazine that instigated the pro-ERA consortium, featured an article by Cathleen Douglas, fourth wife of three-times-divorced former Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas. Her article contained a lot of nonsense about a wife's being "considered the 'chattel,' or property, of her husband, with the same legal rights as a goat, a hog or a piece of land."

It is too bad that some women believe such falsehoods. This is the way the women's liberation movement deliberately degrades the homemaker and hacks away at her sense of self-worth and pride and pleasure in being female. The best cure for women who are limited in their own self-esteem is to stop reading women's magazines!

Many people have supported the Equal Rights Amendment in the mistaken belief that it means "equal pay for equal work." The fact is that ERA will add no new employment rights whatsoever. Federal employment laws are already completely sex-neutral. ERA will not add any new rights to those spelled out in the Equal Employment Opportunity Act of 1972, which prohibits all sex discrimination in hiring, pay, and promotion.

If any woman thinks she has been discriminated against, she can file her claim with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, and the government will pay the costs. Under this law, women have already won multi-million-dollar settlements against some of the largest companies in the country including $38 million against AT&T and $30 million against the big steel companies. There is nothing more that ERA can do.

When I debated the leading congressional proponent of ERA, former Congresswoman Martha Griffiths, on the Lou Gordon television show in Detroit, I made the statement that "ERA will do absolutely nothing for women in the field of employment." She replied, "I never claimed it would."

Her concession is similar to those made by other pro-ERA lawyers when they are cross-examined in debates or at stake legislative hearings. It is only those who are permitted to make statements without rebuttal or cross-examination (such as Betty Ford) who continue to promote the false illusion that ERA means equal pay for equal work. It can be stated categorically that ERA will not give women equal pay for equal work, or any employment rights, choices or opportunities that they do not now have.