CULTURE VULTURE

History one apparently never learns at school, Part IV

Women, Academics and Politics Today

BY C.S. GILBERT

As installment III ended, on June 30, 1982, the Equal Rights Amendment had just failed to win the requisite 36 states for ratification. That failure is somewhat surprising, as powerful, national civil rights and women’s rights groups, as well as the majority of religious denominations, supported ratification.

Significantly, however, opponents included the politically savvy Roman Catholic Church and the Church of Jesus Christ of the Latter Day Saints, the Mormons. Political conservatives rallied like-minded women under the leadership of Phyllis Schafly in opposition; they widely disseminated assertions both true and false about the amendment. Most effective, it seems, were the ideas that it would outlaw men’s and women’s separate public restrooms (false) and that it would open the draft to women (true). Today’s all-volunteer military forces are integrated on all fronts, including the formerly male-only Army, Navy, Air Force and Coast Guard academies, and thousands of women have chosen to enlist, (fig?) choosing to make it a career.

My reply to the draft scare argument was always that I didn’t want either their daughters or my sons to go to war. I have always been in favor of an universal, two-year obligation after high school, whether it be to the military or civilian service, the latter including conservation, school or medical support or whatever—a nationwide Peace Corps or Urban Corps for young adults.

But in a significant way, in spite of the continuing women’s rights efforts of the National Organization for Women, the National Council of Jewish Women, the American Association of University Women, the American Civil Liberties Union and scores of other organizations, large and small, 1982 was the highest the tide got. With the inauguration of Ronald Reagan in 1981, in fact, the national political pendulum began to swing right — and has been, with the eight-year hiatus of the Clinton administration, been moving right ever since.

Compared to the extreme Right Wing that is presently holding the entire Republican Party hostage, Richard Nixon and especially Gerald Ford were liberals. The current GOP seems to oppose anything that benefits women’s employment, their health, their families. It is not outlandish to believe they are waging a war against women when you consider that a respected Congressman stated belief in “legitimate rape” and the fact that if a rape is legitimate, a woman’s reproductive system shuts down and conception is impossible. That is simply insane.

This is not to say that some progress has not been made. More women than ever before serve in Congress and in elected and appointed positions in every state. Two women are considered serious contenders for the Presidency of the U.S. Women have led major corporations. (And Golda Meir, Margaret Thatcher and Angela Merkel have led nations.)

Title IX, demanding equity in educational institutions that receive public funding, has revolutionized education, particularly athletics. Youngsters today cannot imagine a high school with no varsity or even extracurricular sports for girls. And women’s studies departments have been established across the land. There is ironically, now, as I recall struggling in the mid-1970s, to convince Rutgers to provide an umbrella for the handful of courses focusing on women — women’s history, women in literature, psychology of women and the like — and create a women’s program. Not a major or even a minor, but a program. We failed. (It was that issue that caused me, a lowly instructor, to seek the support of Professor of Law Ruth Bader Ginsberg, who for some reason refused even to speak with me.)

There are fewer glass ceilings in business and academia now. Payment equity was bolstered by passage of the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act (2009). But there are still glaring inequities, most clearly in insurance rates and access to medical services, not the least of which is abortion. It is ironic, but I believe there will be nationally supported Marriage Equality supporting same-sex marriage long before we have an ERA. This brings us back to the assertion that initiated this series of columns: Florida schools do not teach women’s history. I fear Key West isn’t much, if at all, the exception.

That’s all for now. Gotta fly!

TO BE CONCLUDED: Reproductive Freedom

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