History of Women’s Status
For most of history, women’s rights were synonymous with their duties: they had the right to take care of their husbands and homes, teach their children and promote moral virtues. Single women retained more control over their lives but a married woman’s very identity dissolved into her husband’s.
After women won the right to vote they didn’t participate in great numbers, so rights for women slipped to low priority for legislators. To remedy that, women activists began the effort to pass an Equal Rights Amendment (ERA) in 1923.
Do Women All Want Different The Same Things?
The ERA caused a storm of dissension among women’s groups. The reformers wanted to retain protective legislation like limits on working hours, weights women could lift, and banned them from dangerous jobs like mining. Feminists wanted equality across the board, now. World War II suspended the protective laws, and after the war women wanted to stay in their well-paying jobs.
In 1972 Congress passed the ERA with the support of Democrats and Republicans. It read, “Equality of rights under the law shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any state on account of sex.”
Do Women Have Equal Rights Today?
Phyllis Schlafly and her STOP-ERA movement are widely credited with defeating the ERA, which failed to meet the ratification deadline. The ERA has been reintroduced to every Congress since 1982 and still has not passed. Twenty-two state constitutions grant some form of equal rights to women.
A 2001 poll showed 96 percent of U.S. adults believe that male and female citizens should have equal rights. Nearly three-quarters of the respondents mistakenly assumed that the Constitution already includes such a guarantee. In a January 2011 interview, Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia stated his belief that the U.S. Constitution does not protect against sex discrimination.
What is Women’s Status Today?
A Women’s Health blog reported a myriad of problems facing women today: women are brutalized as a war tactic; girls are kept from attending school; women are punished for trying to participate in the economy. This despite repeated evidence that improving women’s conditions improves society as a whole. The World Bank notes that a dramatic increase in the number of women in the workforce has paralleled a 30 percent decrease in extreme poverty.
In a world index comparing factors like male and female earnings and senior management roles, the U.S. ranked No. 12. Recent studies have also shown that American women tend to lead shorter lives than women in any other major industrialized country.
In April 2013 Hilary Clinton spoke at the fourth Women in the World conference, ending with a rousing call to action: “Let’s keep fighting for opportunities and dignity. Let’s keep fighting for freedom and equality. Let’s keep fighting for full participation, and let’s keep telling the world over and over again that, yes, women’s rights are human rights and human rights are women’s rights—once and for all.”