Review by Jo Freeman                                                                                          

 

 

“All citizens are created equal but some or more equal than others” is the message of this book.  Women are not the only unequal citizens in this country, but they are the most numerous.  The Equal Rights Amendment was an attempt to bring real equality to women’s legal status after the 19th Amendment gave women the right, but not always the reality, to the franchise.

 

Focusing on the first 40 years of the struggle for the ERA, DeWolf divides proponents and opponents into emancipationists and protectionists.  This division does not correspond with traditional political divisions such as liberals and conservatives as there were plenty of each on both sides of the ERA at different points in time.

 

Chief among the emancipationists were members of the National Woman’s Party (NWP – misspelled in the Index as National Women’s Party), which had been started in 1916 to press for the 19th Amendment through pickets and demonstrations.  After 1920 it looked for ways to empower women through equal rights and opportunities with men.  The protectionists accepted the reality that women’s lesser physical strength and greater family responsibilities meant that they needed to be protected from direct competition with men.  Equal rights could lead to exploitation.

 

The NWP initially tried to work with protectionists to craft language agreeable to both sides, but  decided that that was not possible.  After a textually simple ERA was introduced into Congress by two Republicans in 1923, both sides hardened, with social reformers unalterably opposed to any Constitutional amendment.

 

During the Depression, governments at all levels sought to drive women from the paid labor force in the belief that this would create more jobs for men, who were the prime providers.  Married women in particular faced discrimination.  Various governments (especially the federal government) would not permit public employment of two spouses.  This rule fell harder on some groups than others. Among African-Americans, a school teacher married to a postal worker was the route to the middle class, even at the lower wages of black  women teachers.  When married women teachers lost their jobs, the male postal worker didn’t make enough to keep  that middle class status.

 

The NWP shifted its focus to combating these laws and practices.  As it fought for women’s right to work on the same terms and for the same pay as men, it was able to ally with other groups which had the same interest, though not always for the same reason.  It also worked to establish equal nationality rights, through treaties and law which would allow an America woman to convey her nationality onto her children, even if married to a foreigner and living in his country.

 

World War II brought women into the paid labor force, with the result that special labor laws for women became archaic.  But they didn’t go away.  Women were pushed into the paid labor force during the war, and out of it when the war was over.  “Rosie” discovered that she liked paid work.   Public opinion about women, work, and the ERA slowly shifted to the emancipationist camp.

 

The author reviews the second ERA struggle in an Epilogue.  The ERA is not part of the Constitution but it is closer.  It became a partisan issue in the 1970s, after finally being passed by Congress in 1972.  It was three states short of ratification by the time the seven-year deadline was reached.  Since then three more states have ratified.  Do they count is the question for today.

 

Although this book is on the ERA, it does go into other laws that affected women, especially their employment opportunities.  Read it as a general review of public policy on women, especially at the federal level up to 1963.  Then imagine how different things would have been if the ERA had been ratified several decades ago.

 

©2021 Jo Freeman for SeniorWomen.com