SIT DOWN, AND READ THIS from 1975: antiERA virulence

[Ed., for good or bad, the current opposition seems to have lost its fire. WE are gaining on them!] Have fun with this.

Tactics change as the

advocates of the so-called

Equal Rights Amendment continue

to make war on the American family.

Behind

The War

On Women

by Jean Belsante and Rita Mahan 1975

• WOMEN'S LIB activists have

lately begun to rea lize that their pet

project, the Equal Rights Amendment

(E .R.A.) , is in trouble. Although

E.R.A. was ratified by the Senate and

House of Representatives in 1972 after

having been rejected by every Congress

since 1923, it must still be confirmed

by 38 states in order to become the

27th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.

To date, 34 states have ratified

this Amendment, two have rescinded,

and further passage of E.R.A. is pres ently

in doubt. So a new strategy has

been adopted - the push for establishment

of E.R.A. on the state level by

referendum . Voters in some states are

now being asked to go to the polls to

November 12, 1975

decide whether the controversial

E.R.A. should be added to their state

constitutions. The measure had been

slipped by in 15 states until last week,

when the battle was joined by Conservatives

and both New York and New

Jersey rejected state E.R.A. referenda.

The E.R.A. promoters consistently

trill on the theme that this legislation

will bring equal pay for equal work.

But that guarantee already exists under

such laws as the Equal Pay Act,

the Civil Rights Acts of 1964 and 1968,

the Equal Opportunity Employment

Act of 1972, and current interpretations

of the 5th, 14th, and 19th

Amendments to the U.S. Constitution.

As we shall see, E.R.A. pretends to

improve the status of women but, in

reality, it takes away the rights that

women now possess.

Radical Consequences

Rarely publicized is the maze of

more ominous and far-reaching consequences

that will be realized, should

E.R.A. be passed, including the fact

that it will nullify thousands of state

laws in America that currently protect

women and insure an orderly society.

For example:

• E.R.A. will eliminate privacy

between the sexes in such areas as

public rest rooms, prisons, reformatories,

schools, and the military.

Those who favor E.R.A. claim that

a constitutional "right of privacy" will

prevent this from happening. However,

Supreme Court Justice Potter

Stewart has stated, "I can find no such

general right of privacy in the Bill of

Rights, in any other part of the Constitution,

or in any case ever decided by

this Court."

The E.R.A. supporters often cite the

ruling in Griswold v. Connecticut,

handed down in 1965, which they say

supports a citizen's right of privacy.

But this ruling dealt only with the use

of contraceptives by a married couple,

and as the attorney general of Virginia

has stated, this decision relates only to

sanctity of the marital relationship

and nothing more.

Further, only four months after the

E.R.A. was proposed by Congress as

the intended 27th Amendment, the

U.S . Department of Labor presented

in the Federal Register for July 15,

2

1972, an E.R.A.-based directive proposing:

"All provisions relating to separate

facilities based on sex are eliminated.

Separate facilities for each sex

have no basis in sanitation standards."

• E.R.A. will subject young

women at the age of 18 years to the

draft, should one be reinstated.

Although there is no military draft

in the United States at the moment,

such a draft for military service could

be reinstated on a moment's notice.

The E.R.A. would put women on warships,

subject them to combat duty,

and could ultimately result in some

being placed in the P.O.W. camps of

brutal enemies.

• E.R.A. will strike down sodomy

and seduction laws; statutory rape,

prostitution, and obscenity laws;

and, it will eliminate adultery laws

that the courts judge to contain sex

discriminatory provisions.

All of this has been substantiated in

detail by pro-E.R.A. scholars in the

Yale Law Journal for April 1971, and

again in its January 1973 number.

• E.R.A. will give equal rights to

homosexuals to marry, adopt children,

teach in public schools, and

serve in the Armed Forces.

Since E.R.A.'s passage in Colorado,

for example, Assistant District Attorney

William Wise has ruled that

homosexual marriages are legal there

under E.R.A.

• E.R.A. will wipe out many protective

labor laws which currently

benefit women.

Those who favor E.R.A. contend

that protective laws will be extended

The Review Of The NEWS

I'.

IA

Donald Wood - Ozark Sunbeam

to men also, but the facts show otherwise.

Take California, for example,

where the Bank of America was giving

taxi rides to its female employees who

had to work after dark - a thoughtful

gesture to protect the women against

rapes and muggings. A state court,

citing sex discrimination, ruled that

the bank was discriminating against

male employees and the bank stopped

furnishing these taxi rides .

• E.R.A. will invalidate all state

laws which require a husband to

support his wife and children.

Already the effects of E.R.A. on

wives can be seen. For example,

in Colorado the law that required

a husband to support his wife and

family was declared unconstitutional

after the state E.R.A . was ratified

in 1972. On June 8, 1973, in

November 12, 1975

the case of Colorado v. Elliott , the

judge threw out a charge of felony

non -support against Larry Elliott,

ruling that wives are not legally entitled

to financial support from their

husbands under E.R.A . In Pennsylvania,

where voters approved a

state E.R.A. in 1971, there has been

more of th e same. On December 19,

1973, in the case of Weigand v . Weigand

, the wife lost her lawsuit for a

legal separation, lawyer fees, court

costs, and support money during the

trial. All of these had been available

to wives under previous Pennsylvania

laws, but E.R.A. had wiped

them out.

Given the above consequences of

E.R.A., we could soon expect increasing

rates of divorce and desertio

n, social di srupti on, and moral

3

chaos. And, further, since men

would be relieved of the primary

responsibility of supporting their

families, it is entirely possible that

the destruction of the conventional

American family would follow.

Who Supports E.R.A.?

Unknown to many is the fact that a

major thrust behind E.R.A. is an organizational

network of militant

atheists laboring to abolish the traditional

Judeo-Christian code of morality

upon which America was founded .

This network is directed by an antiGod

leadership that manipulates such

organizations as the International

Humanist And Ethical Union, the

American Humanist Association, the

American Ethical Union, and the Unitarian-

Universalist Association. These

are part of a coalition of scores of

atheistic front groups working together

to promote common radical goals.

Within its own circles this movement

is known as Humanism . It is an ideology

t hat denies God, deifies man instead,

and has as its target the destruction

of Christianity and all institutionalized

religion. For a shocking perspective

of Humanist beliefs, including a

description of how they strive for control

of our traditional institutions, especially

our churches and church

groups, see Humanist Manifestos I and

II, available at most public libraries.

Among the openly declared objectives

of Humanism, some of which

have already been achieved, are the

removal of Bible reading and prayer in

the schools; the teaching of the evolu-

4

tionary theory of man's origin as fact;

and, the promotion of sex education,

drugs, abortion, euthanasia, homosexuality,

pornography, and Women's

Liberation.

Spearheading the movement for

E.R.A. passage are two major Humanist

fronts: the National Organization

for Women (N.O.W.) and the American

Civil Liberties Union (A.C.L.U.),

which have formed statewide coalitions

with other like-minded groups.

Discussing the Women's Liberation

movement, N.O.W. official Warren

Farrell explained in the New York

Sunday News for June 25, 1972, that

"Ultimately, this is a humanist movement

. . . ." The founder and first

president of N.O.W. was Betty Friedan,

a recipient of the Humanist Of

The Year award for 1975 and signer of

Humanist Manifesto II. Other prominent

Humanists in the Women's Lib

movement include Gloria Steinem,

Margaret Mead, Alice Rossi, Gina Allen,

* Miriam Allen deFord, Florynce

Kennedy, and Del Martin and Phyllis

Lyon, both admitted lesbians.

Not surprisingly, Women's Lib is

deeply entrenched in the promotion of

homosexuality and, particularly, lesbianism.

So much so, in fact, that two

weeks ago N.O.W. formally endorsed

so-called "lesbian rights" at its annual

convention. Also noteworthy is the fact

that N.O.W. leadership was among the

inner core of Humanist activists who

"Gina Allen serves on the board of the

Ameri can Humanist Association and is also

a member ofN.O.W.'s National Task Force

on Sexuality.

The Revle. OfThe IIEWS

I

I

I ,

I,'

launched the successful campaign to

legalize abortion on demand.

Like N.O.W., the A.C.L.U. was also

founded in large part by Humanists.

Just to name a few: Professor John

Dewey, Clarence Darrow, Roger Baldwin,

Norman Thomas, and Jane Addams

(also a founder of the League of

Women Voters). This is not to minimize

the fact that the founders and

leaders of the A.C.L.U . included such

radicals as William Z. Foster, former

head of the Communist Party, and

Elizabeth Gurley Flynn of the Central

Committee of the Communist Party,

U.S.A. As of 1961, the top 15 past and

current leaders of the A.C.L.U. had a

combined record of over 1,000 Communist

Front affiliations and citations.

Over the years, the American Civil

Liberties Union has maintained a

steady influx of Humanist leadership

that includes Ramsey Clark, Karl

Menninger, Stuart Chase, Erich

Fromm, S.LE.C.U.S. director Harriet

Pilpel, and radical attorney William

Kunstler. Having aided Humanist

Madalyn Murray (O'Hair) in her crusade

to remove prayer and Bible reading

from public schools, the A.C.L.U.

has more recently directed its efforts to

such Humanist objectives as the legalization

of marijuana, abortion,

pornography, prostitution, and homosexuality.

Of interest is the fact that one of the

major financial supporters of the

A.C.L.U. is Humanist Hugh Hefner's

Playboy Foundation, which has also

made substantial cash payments to the

E.R.A . campaign.

November 12, 1975

Is It A Red Game?

Literature being widely circulated

by E.R.A. supporters states (with no

proof or documentation) that the

E.R.A. is opposed by the Communist

Party. This statement is misleading. In

1970, U.S. Communist Party Secretary

Gus Hall declared in the February issue

of Political Affairs:

For us Communists . . . the entire

cornerstone of the entire struggle . . .

rests on the relationship between the

fight for the liberation of women and

the class struggle, the tie-in between

the forces of women's liberation and

the working class . . . . the struggle

for women's liberation must be uniquely

tied to the struggle against U.S.

imperialism.

An editorial in a March 1974 issue of

The Call, a Marxist-Leninist newspaper,

strongly urged ratification of

E.R.A., contending: " 1974 should be

the year in which the ERA becomes

law .. . . SUPPORT THE ERA!"

In fact, the roots of the entire Women's

Liberation movement extend as

far back as The Communist Manifesto,

wherein Marx and Engels denounced

the institution of the family. Writing

in his Letters From Afar, Lenin explained

the principle:

If we do not draw women into public

activity, into the militia, into political

life; if we do not tear women away from

the deadening atmosphere of household

and kitchen; then it is impossible

to secure real freedom, it is impossible

5

even to build democracy let alone socialism.

And in November of 1918, Lenin

to ld the first All-Russian Congress of

Women Workers: "It has been observed

in the experience of all liberation

movements that the success of a

revolution depends on the extent to

which women take part in it." That is:

Wherever it is possible to radicalize the

women, as through Women's Lib and

the E.R.A., Communist revolution is a

serious possibility. Over the years, a

recurrent theme in Communist literature

stresses that the experience of all

Communist liberation movements

shows that the success of revolution

depends on the extent to which women

take part, and urges that women cannot

assume a true revolutionary role

unless they are relieved of their primary

responsibilities in the home. This

is intrinsic to all Socialist societies,

including that of Red China where

Communist Party leadership has been

hitting at the liberation theme in response

to Mao's command that "to

build a great socialist society, it is of

the utmost importance to arouse the

broad masses of women to join in productive

activity."

Main revolutionary purposes of the

Women's Lib movement are to take

women out of the home , restructure

their thinking in favor of an atheistic,

Socialist ideology , and mobilize them

into a powerful political lobby that can

be used for Communist revolutionary

purposes. It should, therefore, come as

no surprise to discover that riding the

crest of the original wave of feminist

agitators in America during the early

1900s were such radical Socialists as

Crystal Eastman, Henrietta Rodman,

and Margaret Sanger; and such Marxists

as Elizabeth Gurley Flynn, Jane

Addams, Kate Richards O'Hare, and

Rose Pastor Stokes.

The Socialist threads in the tapestry

of the Women's Lib movement

have become increasingly visible in the

contemporary writings of such activists

as Simone de Beauvoir, Shirley

Chisholm, and Bernadette Devlin. As

Women's Lib activist June Sochen has

openly acknowledged in her book

Movers And Shakers:

.. . Most women's lib groups accept

both the class and sex analysis of

the women's dilemma in American society;

that is, they share with the

Marxist-Leninist perspective of the

evils of a capitalistic society . . . .

The drive for so-called Women's

Liberation is clearly pro-Communist,

anti-family, and anti-American - but

it is primarily anti-God. Atheism is the

common bond that links the Communist

and Humanist movements together

in this revolutionary assault on

Western civilization. The Equal Rights

Amendment will "liberate" women :

liberate them from the cherished

place they hold in the divine plan

of God's universe, reduce them to physical

and spiritual bondage, and destroy

them as preservers of the heart of

our society -the traditional American

family. • •

Reprints of this copyrighted article are ava ilable at: 1-99 copies, 7 for $1; 100-499

copies, 13¢ eac h; 500-999 copies, l Ie each; 1,000 or more, 9¢ each. Ord er from

T he Review Of The News, Belmont , Massachuset ts 02178.

Name _

Please enter my subscription. My

payment of ten dollars is enclosed.

The Review Of The News

Bel mo nt, Massachusetts 02178

Tiredof .

"Time" and

DISPARITY BETWEEN MALE AND FEMALE WRITERS, REVIEWERS

A Literary Glass Ceiling?

Why magazines aren't reviewing more female writers.

• Ruth Franklin
• February 7, 2011 | 12:00 am

The first shots were fired last summer, when Jennifer Weiner and Jodi Picoult called the New York Times Book Review a boys’ club. (I weighed in then, too, calling on the Times to respond to statistics posted by Double X regarding the disparity between books by male authors and female authors reviewed in their pages.) Now, the war is on. A few days ago, VIDA, a women’s literary organization, posted on its website a stark illustration of what appears to be gender bias in the book review sections of magazines and literary journals. In 2010, as VIDA illustrated with pie charts, these publications printed vastly more book reviews by men than by women. They also reviewed more books by male authors.

The numbers are startling. At Harper’s, there were 27 male book reviewers and six female; about 69 percent of the books reviewed were by male authors. At the London Review of Books, men wrote 78 percent of the reviews and 74 percent of the books reviewed. Men made up 84 percent of the reviewers for The New York Review of Books and authored 83 percent of the books reviewed. TNR, I’m sorry to say, did not compare well: Of the 62 writers who wrote about books for us last year, only 13 (or 21 percent) were women. We reviewed a total of 64 books, nine of them by women (14.5 percent). “We know women write,” poet Amy King writes on the VIDA website. “We know women read. It’s time to begin asking why the 2010 numbers don’t reflect those facts with any equity.”

But let’s slow down for a moment. There’s some essential data missing from these moan-inducing statistics. What’s the gender breakdown in books published last year? It’s crucial to both of the categories VIDA explores, because freelance book reviewers, who make up the majority of the reviewing population, tend to be authors themselves. If more men than women are publishing books, then it stands to reason that more books by men are getting reviewed and more men are reviewing books. So TNR’s Eliza Gray, Laura Stampler, and I crunched some numbers. Our sample was small and did not pretend to be comprehensive, and it may not represent a cross-section of the industry, because we did not include genre books and others with primarily commercial appeal. But it gave us a snapshot. And what we found helps explain VIDA’s mystery.

We looked at fall 2010 catalogs from 13 publishing houses, big and small. Discarding the books that were unlikely to get reviewed—self-help, cooking, art—we tallied up how many were by men and how many were by women. Only one of the houses we investigated—the boutique Penguin imprint Riverhead—came close to parity, with 55 percent of its books by men and 45 percent by women. Random House came in second, with 37 percent by women. It was downhill from there, with three publishers scoring around 30 percent—Norton, Little Brown, and Harper—and the rest 25 percent and below, including the elite literary houses Knopf (23 percent) and FSG (21 percent). Harvard University Press, the sole academic press we considered, came in at just 15 percent.

I speculated that independents—more iconoclastic, publishing more work in translation, and perhaps less focused on the bottom line—would turn out to be more equitable than the big commercial houses. Boy, was I wrong. Granted, these presses publish a smaller number of books in total, so a difference in one or two books has a larger effect on their percentages. Still, their numbers are dismaying. Graywolf, with 25 percent female authors, was our highest-scoring independent. The cutting-edge Brooklyn publisher Melville House came in at 20 percent. The doggedly leftist house Verso was second-to-last at 11 percent. Our lowest scorer? It pains me to say it, because Dalkey Archive Press publishes some great books that are ignored by the mainstream houses. But it would be nice if more than 10 percent of them were by women. (In the 2011 edition of Dalkey’s much-lauded Best European Fiction series, edited by Aleksandar Hemon, 30 percent of the stories are by women. Last year, at least Zadie Smith wrote the preface.)

Now we can better understand why fewer books by women than men are getting reviewed. In fact, these numbers we found show that the magazines are reviewing female authors in something close to the proportion of books by women published each year. The question now becomes why more books by women are not getting published.

The VIDA numbers provide a start toward an answer: Of the new writing published in Tin House, Granta,and The Paris Review, around one-third of it was by women. For many fiction writers and poets, publishing in these journals is a first step to getting a book contract. Do women submit work to these magazines at a lower rate than men, or are men’s submissions more likely to get accepted? We can’t be sure. But, as Robin Romm writes in Double X, “The gatekeepers of literary culture—at least at magazines—are still primarily male.” If these gatekeepers are showing a gender bias, there’s not much room to make it up later.

Or maybe it’s that we’re not quite as equal as we like to think we are. My colleague Meghan O’Rourke wistfully comments in Slate that “writing isn’t a field historically dominated by men, like theoretical physics … and one might reasonably have assumed that since feminism’s second wave, matters had roughly evened out.” In fact, it’s the rare profession in which the numbers are even. According to a fact sheet published last year by the AFL-CIO’s Department for Professional Employees, in 2008, women constituted 32.4 percent of all lawyers and 32.2 percent of physicians and surgeons. (We’re 68.8 percent of psychologists, 92 percent of nurses, and 50.4 percent of technical writers, the only type of writer included in the report.) Granted, many important numbers have already increased: The proportion of women in law school has gone up from 3.7 percent in 1963 to nearly 50 percent in 2007-08, and women also account for nearly 50 percent of med school students. Yet, while we may have come a long way, in many areas we’re still catching up.

Peter Stothard, editor of the Times Literary Supplement, told The Guardian that he refused to “make a fetish” of having an equal number of male and female contributors. “The TLS is only interested in getting the best reviews of the most important books,” he said. I, too, like to think I choose the books that I review for their inherent interest, their literary quality. But the VIDA statistics made me wonder afresh about the ways we define “best” and “most important” in a field as subjective as literature, which, after all, is deeply influenced by the cultural norms in any given age. As a member of third-wave feminism, growing up in the 1970s and ’80s, I was brought up to believe we lived in a meritocracy, where the battles had been fought and won, with the spoils left for us to gather. It is sobering to realize that we may live and work in a world still held in the grip of unconscious biases, no less damaging for their invisibility. (Meghan has written about this, too.)

Now, I’m contemplating my personal 2010 statistics, which demonstrate how a strict male-female breakdown flattens out the complexities. I reviewed a biography of a female writer (Clarice Lispector) written by a man, but focused the piece on her and her work: Does this count in the male or female column? What about a new translation by a woman (Lydia Davis) of a book by a male author (Madame Bovary)? And, in my columns, I often mentioned new books by female writers and addressed issues of particular interest to women, such as the aforementioned “Franzenfreude” debacle. But, in the end, my bottom line was only a little more equitable than the norm: Of the books I reviewed, around 33 percent were by women.

Ruth Franklin is a senior editor for The New Republic.

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Source URL: http://www.tnr.com/article/books-and-arts/82930/VIDA-women-writers-magazines-book-reviews

CONSEQUENCES OF MORE WOMEN IN THE WORKPLACE

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Causes and Consequences of the Increasing Numbers of Women in the Workforce

Feb. 14 2011 - 12:03 pm | 399 views | 0 recommendations | 4 comments

By LISA QUAST, Forbes Magazine

I recently read an article in The Economist, Female Power; Women in the Workforce, that states, “The economic empowerment of women across the rich world is one of the most remarkable revolutions of the past 50 years.”

The topic of the increasing number of women in business has always interested me because as a certified executive coach, one of the most prevalent issues women want to discuss is how they can obtain better work/personal life balance. Interestingly, this topic did not become an issue until women entered the workforce in increasing numbers and, as the article mentions, women became “caught in an ever-tightening tangle of commitments.”

So I decided to do a little research to better understand some of the main causes of the incredible increase in the number of women in the workplace over the last 50-75 years and then look at the consequences of this revolution of women at work.

Causes for the increase of women in the workforce:

• World War II labor shortages: Men heading off to fight in the war caused a labor shortage. The U.S. government created a campaign using the fictional character of Rosie the Riveter to lure women into working. “From 1940-1945, the female labor force grew by 50% and female employment in defense industries grew by 462%” (AllAboutHistory.org). This also shifted cultural attitudes, making it okay for middle class women to work, where previously it had been taboo.

• Rise of the feminist movement: The movement pushed for equal rights and liberation for women. As The Economist article states, “Feminists such as Betty Friedan have demonized domestic slavery and lambasted discrimination.”
• Economic necessity: With the increasing cost of living, for many women, working is an economic necessity in order to support their family.
• Passage of governmental equal rights acts: Examples include the Equal Pay Act of 1963, the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the Presidential Executive Order in 1967, and The Equal Rights Amendment proposed in 1972.
• Rise of the service sector and decline of the manufacturing sector: This caused a growing demand for female workers. As The Economist article states about jobs, “When brute strength mattered more than brains, men had an inherent advantage. Now that brainpower has triumphed the two sexes are more evenly matched.”
• Expansion and increased access to higher education: This has allowed more women to go to college, thus increasing their ability to obtain jobs. In the 1949-1950 school year women earned 120,796 college degrees, or roughly 24% of all degrees earned. By the 2008-2009 school year, women had earned 1,849,200 college degrees, or roughly 60% of the total degrees (Digest of Education Statistics).

Consequences of the increasing number of women in the workforce:

• Increased purchasing power of women: “With female consumers controlling 85 percent of all purchase decisions, responsible for $7 trillion in spending, and 78 percent of women considering purchases more carefully, a woman’s wallet is more influential than ever before” (AdweekMedia).
• Business result improvements: According to research and advisory company, Catalyst, companies with the highest representation of women board members attain significantly higher financial performance than those with the lowest representation: 53% higher Return on Equity; 42% higher Return on Sales; and 66% higher Return on Invested Capital (Joy, et al, 2007).
• Increased Gross Domestic Product: The Economist article states, “Goldman Sachs calculates that, leaving all other things equal, increasing women’s participation in the labor market to male levels will boost GDP by 21% in Italy, 19% in Spain, 16% in Japan, 9% in America, France and Germany, and 8% in Britain.”
• Increased number of women owned businesses: In the U.S., “nearly 10.4 million firms are owned by women (50% or more), employing more than 12.9 million people, and generating $1.9 trillion in sales” (2007 Wow! Quick Facts: Women, p.50).
• Less time for mothers to spend with children due to their work schedules: There are definite downsides to women working. For example, mothers working full-time means they have busier schedules and less time to spend with children. “One third of all school age children in the United States are, for some part of the week, latch key kids; that is, they go home to an empty house or apartment” (Alston, 2007). As The Economist article warns, “Even well-off parents worry that they spend too little time with their children, thanks to crowded schedules and the ever-buzzing Blackberry.”
• Increased stress levels and changing roles: Harper and Leicht (Exploring Social Change: America and the World, 2007, p. 91) state, “The most pressing problem of dual-income families is not money, but the problem of managing ‘ragged’ family schedules and adjusting husband/wife roles.” Women are currently juggling full-time careers, managing household chores and child rearing duties, as well as taking care of aging parents, thus greatly increasing their level of daily stress compared to women of previous generations. Family relationships have also been shifting in dual-income families from patriarchal authority and “from fixed ‘role scripts’ toward more flexible ‘role negotiation’” and equalitarian relationships (p. 93).
• Difficulty accessing quality child care: Another pressing problem due to the increasing numbers of women working is access to quality child care, which Harper and Leicht (2007, p. 92) state “is in short supply and expensive.” For poor parents, the struggle can be even worse because “childcare eats a terrifying proportion of the family budget…but quitting work to look after the children can mean financial disaster” (The Economist, 2010, p.2).
• Changing how people work: In order to help workers meet both job and family requirements, more and more companies are allowing a portion of jobs to be completed via telecommuting and “home-working is increasingly fashionable” (The Economist, 2010, p. 3).
• Changing the school schedules of children: Even school districts are making changes in order to better match the school days of children with their parent’s dual-job households; thus alleviating some of the child care burden. “Some of the most popular American charter schools offer longer school days and shorter summer holidays” (The Economist, 2010, p. 4).

The analysis of the consequences from the increasing number of women in the workforce shows there have been many changes in business and family life. While some of the changes have been seen as positive, others have been seen as negative; and in some areas, the full social effects have yet to be felt.

How have you been affected, either positively or negatively, by the increasing number of women in the workforce? Share your thoughts in the “Comments” section.

~ Lisa Quast

Virginia Senate passes ERA; House Rejects it! 2-2011

Posted at 4:05 PM ET, 02/14/2011

Equal Rights Amendment, bipartisan redistricting die in subcommittee

By Rosalind S. Helderman

A subcommittee of the House of Delegates has, as expected, killed a Senate bill that would have made Virginia the 36th state to ratify the Equal Rights Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.

The Democratic-led Senate adopted the bill last week, the first time the measure received a vote of a full chamber of the General Assembly since 1980. Following its 1972 adoption by Congress, the ERA amendment was ratified by 35 states -- three short of the 38 necessary for inclusion in the Constitution.

A time limit imposed by Congress for ratifying the amendment has since expired. But Sen. Patsy Ticer (D-Alexandria), the bill's sponsor, said some attorneys believe the issue remains live.

Ticer said Monday that her bill died after it failed to receive a second after its adoption was moved in subcommittee. The panel did not comment on the bill, she said. "We have a very backwards group of men on that group whose wives haven't yet enlightened them as to the necessity of this," she said.

The same subcommittee also killed a proposal by Sen. R. Creigh Deeds (D) to amend Virginia's constitution to create a new bipartisan commission to draw new legislative maps every 10 years in response to the census. It was at least the ninth year in a row that the House has killed a proposal passed by the senate to create a bipartisan redistricting commission.

2011

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By Rosalind S. Helderman | February 14, 2011; 4:05 PM ET
Categories: General Assembly 2011, House of Delegates, Rosalind Helderman, State Senate

Tallahassee Democrat says With No Hope of Passing, ERA Returns to the Legislature

ERA Friend Bill Cotterell's article at the cusp of Christmas starts of sounding defeatist but proceeds surprisingly positive.

Bill Cotterell: With no hope of passing, ERA returns to Legislature

Tallahassee Democrat - Tallahassee, Fla.

Author:	Bill Cotterell
Date:	Dec 23, 2010

Document Text

Well, you can't say they didn't warn us.

When thousands of demonstrators marched on the Capitol, urging Florida legislators to ratify the Equal Rights Amendment 30 to 35 years ago, there were always a few signs proclaiming, "ERA Won't Go Away." And sure enough, like an eight-track Bee Gees disco tune on the oldies station, those three little sentences that set hearts aflutter around here from 1973 to 1982 are with us once again.

"Equality of rights under the law shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of sex," says Section 1, for those who missed the '70s.

"The Congress shall have the power to enforce, by appropriate legislation, the provisions of this article," says Section 2, followed by, "This amendment shall take effect two years after the date of ratification."

Senate minority leader Nan Rich, D-Weston, has re-introduced a ratification resolution (SJR 286) for the 2011 session. It won't pass, partly because the ERA is one of the reasons Nan Rich is minority leader; following its feminist instincts helped the Democratic Party lose the legislative majorities it had when the amendment first surfaced.

That was March 22, 1972, when Congress passed the 27th Amendment and set a 1979 deadline for ratification by 38 states. Like a mad crush, it started strong -- 22 ratifications in the first year -- but only eight states passed it in 1973, three in 1974, one in 1975 and 1977.

Feminists tried to rekindle the ardor, getting Congress to extend the deadline to June 30, 1982, but not one state ratified in overtime. The red-clad women who wore big octagonal "STOP ERA" buttons threw a celebratory banquet in Washington, and President Reagan put his daughter Maureen in a charge of a 50-state project to repeal discriminatory statutes without altering the Constitution.

But in 1992, a different 27th Amendment was ratified, the "Madison Amendment" involving congressional salaries, which had been referred to the states in 1789. ERA supporters reasoned that if 203 years was good for James, we could waive the ERA deadline in honor of Dolley.

Or, at least, get three more states to ratify it and see if Washington goes along. Chances are, Washington would, since Sect. 2 gives enforcement power to Congress -- another reason states won't do it. Whatever else you might read into the Nov. 2 elections, people weren't clamoring to put more power in Washington.

Back when the amendment was leading the network news, when Alan Alda and Marlo Thomas were speaking at rallies on the Old Capitol steps, when first lady Betty Ford was phoning Florida legislators to lobby for the amendment, there were two big objections that seem passe now. If the ERA were ratified, opponents warned, women would be drafted and homosexual couples would get married.

The draft is gone and women serve in almost all areas of the military now -- including, soon, submarines. Gay marriage seemed far-fetched in 1975, but its adoption in some states poses an obstacle for Rich's ratification resolution. Florida voters passed a state constitutional amendment two years ago, defining marriage as a heterosexual union, and that would seem to be superseded by a federal edict.

The ERA's failure should be viewed in the context of its time. That initial surge of ratification came just before the Supreme Court's 1973 Roe v. Wade ruling, legalizing abortion. Backlash against that, coupled with the strong identity of ERA proponents with the pro-choice position, helped fuel the anti-ERA forces.

Proponents had the political establishment on their side back then. Gov. Reubin Askew urged ratification in his "State of the State" speeches at the opening of legislative sessions, and Attorney General Bob Shevin legally rebutted arguments that the ERA would invalidate rape laws or allow men to escape alimony and child support.

Florida would have joined that early push for ratification but for a legal quirk. The House passed the ERA 84-3 on March 24, 1972, but the Florida Constitution required an election to occur between congressional submission and state voting on any federal amendments. The Senate postponed action, confident it would come back and do the job in 1973.

A federal judge later struck down the requirement, saying states couldn't place additional conditions on a federal amendment. But by then the opposition had mobilized and the ERA never regained momentum.

Nationally, the steep fall of the ERA from irresistible force to dormant flop paralleled -- in reverse -- the rise of Ronald Reagan and the religious right. And as the Democrats today disdain the Tea Party voters, ERA proponents badly underestimated the "Stop ERA" forces of the late 1970s.

But in spirit, and sometimes in fact, today's ERA supporters are the great-granddaughters of women who marched for suffrage 100 years ago. The amendment has been reintroduced in Washington, for resubmission to the states, but chances of it getting a two-thirds vote in the new Congress are about as remote as Rich's prospects of getting her Florida colleagues to forget that 1982 deadline and ratify what their forebears rejected 30 years ago.

But it will be back next year, and every year. The ERA, as they used to say, won't go away.

Contact Senior Political Writer Bill Cotterell at (850) 671-6545 or at bcotterell@tallahassee.com.

POINT-COUNTERPOINT article + Sandy's response

SandyO's Zinger to Broward.com by Nevins, below.

Reply

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Sandy Oestreich

show details 10:13 PM (1 minute ago)

[ Don't forget to call Speaker Cannon 407 623-5740, and Sen. Flores, Chair of Judiciary Ctte 305 270-6550. Lv the respective messages: "I urge you to agenda ERA bill HCR 8003 asap (House bill#)." and "I urge you to agenda ERA Senate bill 286 asap."] Thanks for these IMPORTANT calls that MOVE ERA! sandyo

[Read the article and Sandy's response:

Back To The Future: ERA Resurfaces In Tallahassee

BY BUDDY NEVINS, BrowardBeat.com 2/2/2011

[Don’t MISS Sandyo’s ERA response, scroll down.]

It’s baaaack!

The Equal Rights Amendment has been reintroduced once again in the Legislature.

Sponsors are Senate Democratic Leader Nan Rich of Weston and state Rep. Lori Berman, D-Delray Beach.

“As the first woman to lead the Democratic Caucus in the Florida Senate, I’m proud to sponsor the ERA,” Rich said in a news release. “I am hopeful that with the ERA’s passage, we will continue the progress that women have made in taking on leadership roles in business, politics, academia and society in general.”

This is an effort to make a statement. Rich and Berman obviously want to show that by sponsoring the ERA, it is the Democrats that care about the rights of women.

Will it pass?

There is a better chance that Senate President Mike Haridopolos will show up in drag at the Capitol than this ever getting to the floor for a vote. Republicans don’t want it.

The ERA, which would enshrine women as equals in the U. S. Constitution, was defeated five times between 1974 and 1982.

Sometimes the vote was close. In 1979 and 1977, it lost in the Senate by just 21-19.

Dempsey Barron’s Role

The defeat of the ERA can be laid at the feet of arguably the most influential Florida legislator ever – Dempsey Barron.

Dempsey Barron

Barron had an unparalleled mastery of legislative rules. He parlayed this skill and his abilities of persuasion to steamroll the Senate into following his lead.

He was so powerful that he once famously threw Gov. Reubin Askew out of “my Senate.”

The Panhandle Democratic senator brilliantly forged a winning alliance in the 1970s and 1980s.

He joined conservative North Florida rural Democrats and some urban Republicans. Together they often thwarted the more liberal Democrats from South Florida on everything from funding to social issues.

In the Senate, the Rules Committee is all-powerful because it controls the legislative calendar. The committee decides which bills can be debated on the floor and which bills die.

Barron was Rules Chairman for a dozen years, in addition to being the Senate president in the mid-1970s. After he left the presidency, he handpicked his successors for years.

Barron hated the ERA. So it was defeated, repeatedly.

Helping to kill the ERA along with Barron were two Broward Republicans – Jim Scott, later a county commissioner, and the late J. W. Stevens of Parkland, who had been a county commissioner before going to the Senate.

Barron died in 2001 at 79, leaving the ERA dead, too.

The ERA today has no chance of being resurrected, even with Barron long in his grave.

Rich and Berman’s effort is noble. It is sadly doomed to failure.

I can almost see Barron smiling.

###

RESPONSE TO ABOVE by Sandy Oestreich—on our www.2passERA.org blog 2-3-2011

Sandy Oestreich, Founder-President, Equal Rights Alliance Inc., and ERA Education, Inc.

Former elected official; Prof. Emerita, NY; Co-author, internationally distributed pharmacology texts; Nurse practitioner; Biographied along with Gloria Steinem and other pioneer feminists in Feminists Who Changed America; Wife, mom and windsurfer

RESPONSE:

Sheesh, guess Nevins doesn’t have his ear to the ground these days.

Doesn’t know that Equal Rights Alliance spearheads FL ERA ratification bills EVERY year? Doesn’t know that we also help mentor the 7 other states as they file bills annually, too We only need 3 states more to ratify ERA. N. Dakota recently RE-ratified to show strong intent. Doesn’t know that Florida alone has 300 000 ERA members; 7 newspapers endorsing; 88% of constituents by indep. survey ENDORSING the re-ignited ERA? Has an illustrious Board, with former Cong. Pat Schroeder chairing? Has 7 Regional ERA Directors and often, 49 bill cosponsors–bipartisan, both sexes, even Republican Prime Sponsors; passes Sen. Judiciary 8-3, bipartisan?

Only reason there ARE ERA bills in FL every year is because we rekindled ERA in 2001 by giving speeches everywhere and buttoning legislators as they emerge from the Restrooms. Women, we follow them in and get cosponsorships!

“We don’t fool around”. We WILL do this, absolutely. No way will America remain medieval and out of the loop that all nations since WWII are in. THEY already HAVE an ERA. We share the dark corner with Saudi Arabia, Lestholo, Somalia. Imagine that!

Now that we have the FL legislators inured to Special Interests’ fake Red Herrings like ERA will force women to be in the Catholic pulpits and will make teenagers into prostitutes!!, we are down to brass tacks. Now they understand that ERA BENEFITS BUSINESS and benefits men, too AND requires NO FUNDING, ERA is on the MOVE.

Just wait until the Republican leadership digests the fact that Scandinavia’s GDP grows now that they promote “mainstreaming” of women so they can EARN and pay more taxes!! Makes more sense than Florida does! Give women the freedom of full personhood (that 14th Amendment does NOT), and JUSTG WATCH AMERICA THRIVE.

“Equality under the law shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of sex”/gender.”
THAT IS ALL THERE IS TO THE ERA so put your tail between your legs if you believe wrongly that ERA regulates anything about samesex or abortion or women in the military or might use your toilet seat!
Get with the program: All are warmly welcomed to http://www.2PassERA.org that other states’ legislators refer to for correct, current, comprehensive ERA Information.

Remember, FL legislators, “you’ve seen us in Tallahassee’s hallways, you’ve seen us endlessly in your offices, and you’re gonna KEEP seeing us there whether in a wheelchair and on oxygen…because WE ARE GOING TO DO THIS.

We are DONE with this repression stuff. Done, I tell you1

Got that, Mr Nevins?
We only need 3 states more to ratify ERA. N. Dakota recently RE-ratified to show strong intent.

No brainer. Republicans

Doesn’t know that Florida alone has 300 000 ERA members; 7 newspapers endorsing; 88% of constituents by indep. survey ENDORSING the re-ignited ERA? Has an illustrious Board, with former Cong. Pat Schroeder chairing? Has 7 Regional ERA Directors and often, 49 bill cosponsors–bipartisan, both sexes, even Republican Prime Sponsors; passes Sen. Judiciary 8-3, bipartisan?

Only reason there ARE ERA bills in FL every year is because we rekindled ERA in 2001 by giving speeches everywhere and buttoning legislators as they emerge from the Restrooms. Women, we follow them in and get cosponsorships!

“We don’t fool around”. We WILL do this, absolutely. No way will America remain medieval and out of the loop that all nations since WWII are in. THEY already HAVE an ERA. We share the dark corner with Saudi Arabia, Lestholo, Somalia. Imagine that!

Now that we have the FL legislators inured to Special Interests’ fake Red Herrings like ERA will force women to be in the Catholic pulpits and will make teenagers into prostitutes!!, we are down to brass tacks. Now they understand that ERA BENEFITS BUSINESS and benefits men, too AND requires NO FUNDING, ERA is on the MOVE.

Just wait until the Republican leadership digests the fact that Scandinavia’s GDP grows now that they promote “mainstreaming” of women so they can EARN and pay more taxes!! Makes more sense than Florida does! Give women the freedom of full personhood (that 14th Amendment does NOT), and JUSTG WATCH AMERICA THRIVE.

“Equality under the law shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of sex”/gender.”
THAT IS ALL THERE IS TO THE ERA so put your tail between your legs if you believe wrongly that ERA regulates anything about samesex or abortion or women in the military or might use your toilet seat!
Get with the program: All are warmly welcomed to http://www.2PassERA.org that other states’ legislators refer to for correct, current, comprehensive ERA Information.

Remember, FL legislators, “you’ve seen us in Tallahassee’s hallways, you’ve seen us endlessly in your offices, and you’re gonna KEEP seeing us there whether in a wheelchair and on oxygen…because WE ARE GOING TO DO THIS.

We are DONE with this repression stuff. Done, I tell you.

Got that, Mr Nevins?
No brainer, Republicans.

--
Sandy Oestreich, founder-president of Equal Rights Alliance Inc, and ERA Education Inc.
Prof. Emerita, Adelphi U., NY
Fmr. elected official
Co-author, internationally distributed pharmacology reference texts
Nurse practitioner
Biographied in Feminists Who Changed America
Wife and mom www.2PassERA.org