Political Star-Studded Event Called for ERA Passage
Feminist Majority organized the rally that drew more than 1,000 in a tightly-packed room.
The highlight of Monday’s Democratic National Convention was a star-studded rally held by the Feminist Majority, which called for the passage of the Equal Rights Amendment.
The event packed a large banquet hall at the Palmer House Hotel in Chicago. Roughly 1,000 people attended and chanted as speakers gave high-energy speeches designed to galvanize the feminist movement toward a goal that has a long history.
The most prominent surprise appearance was former U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, who was mainly an electrifying speaker. Still, she was interrupted by a protestor who wanted to know her views on the Israeli-Palestinian question. That protestor was booed and had her shouts drowned out by chants for the ERA.
Pelosi praised Eleanor Smeal, an icon within the feminist movement and the president of the Feminist Majority. My readers and friends in Pittsburgh would be interested to know that she embarked on that journey in our hometown. I’ve told Pittsburgh-based reporters that it would be a great women’s history story when March rolls around.
But back to the rally.
“Women are going to win for our country,” Pelosi said.
Pelosi also gave interesting accounts of the sexism she encountered when she was first in Congress as she tried to establish a right to birth control. It would have been nice to hear more from her, but there were many speakers. Pelosi, for all the criticism she’s faced–both fair and unfair–is a seminally important figure—as important to women’s history as Barack Obama is to black history.
There’s a great book that Pelosi wrote a foreword to that details the beginning of feminism in America. It was called Victory for the Vote: The Fight for Women’s Suffrage and the Century that Followed. It links her to figures like Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony. My favorite part of that book is how the author, Doris Weatherford, distinguished the role of feminist writer from feminist organizer. Stanton, the writer, wrote the thunderbolts. Anthony threw them.
We need writers and organizers. For all noble causes.
Their efforts and those of Sojourner Truth led to women’s suffrage. The Declaration of Sentiments did for women what the Emancipation Proclamation did for enslaved people.
The Equal Rights Amendment was a rallying call for a generation of feminists. Its formation began with the suffrage movement in the 1920s, and it was again the focus of feminism during the second wave.
The Equal Rights Amendment was an offshoot of the passage of the Nineteenth Amendment, which gave women the right to vote. According to The Hidden History of the Equal Rights Amendment, written by Hal Draper and Stephen Diamond, the National Woman's Party was launched in 1921.
The suffragists had pushed for it because sex discrimination happened after World War I. Women had worked in industries, but when the men returned, those in power sought to restore the status quo. Wisconsin was the first to establish an equal rights amendment. It was designed to protect the labor rights of women.
The feminist movement faded a bit in the 1930s but surged again during World War II when women began working in industry on a wide scale again. That was the era of Rosie the Riveter, a poster image promoting women’s involvement in the war effort. It was first supported by the Republican party in 1940. Democrats followed suit four years later, according to Draper and Diamond’s book.
At the time, there was a split between what was known as the “pure” ERA and the workingwoman’s ERA. Purists wanted a blanket statement of gender equality, whereas the working contingent wanted other social protections. The dispute was over how specific the amendment should be.
Richard Nixon, like other Republicans, supported the Pure ERA from the beginning of his career. By the 1950s, however, liberal Democrats had disavowed it in favor of more specific protections. The bill nearly passed during that time, but the effort failed because of opposition to concessions to working women.
In October 1970, Sen. Birch Bayh sought to pass an amendment rooted in the Fourteenth Amendment's language, which calls for equal protection of the law. He wanted to use that with an outright declaration against sex discrimination. He pushed for a flexible amendment that could be interpreted by the Supreme Court to account for different forms of experiences women had.
The ERA took on various forms and was ready to pass. But Phyllis Schlafly, an antiabortion and conservative firebrand, led the opposition against it. According to a history documented by Georgetown University, Schlafly's organization, The Eagle Forum, claimed that the ERA would harm women by reducing their rights to freedom from the draft, financial support from husbands, and the benefit of protective labor laws. She argued that women were not the victims of discrimination. In her view, they enjoyed privileges that men lacked, which were endangered by the ERA. For her, the equality envisioned by the Equal Rights Amendment was not desirable--the status quo was.
When a speaker mentioned it, Schlafly’s name was booed at the event and blamed for the ERA’s downfall in the 1970s.
It wasn’t just the old guard that spoke, though I did listen to other feminist icons like Carol Moseley Braun and others equally as important. Younger women who’ve faced relentless criticism and misrepresentation also spoke out for the amendment's passage. Among them was Rep. Ayanna Pressley, who spoke about the influence her mother had on her. She also connected the struggle for the ERA to the civil rights battles Martin Luther King Jr endured.
“It's past time our laws recognize our contributions and the historic role that we have made. This is not a movement of charity and benevolence. This is a movement of reciprocity for the recognition and acknowledgment of what we are and what we deserve.”