Yesterday, supporters of reproductive rights marched and demonstrated across the country. As I was reading some of my social media accounts, it interested me to see photos of people wearing a button identical to this one from my collection, acquired in the early 1980s (though the button was produced in the 1970s).
The Equal Rights Amendment has a fascinating history in this country which I advise people to research. It had broad bipartisan support across the nation and in government, from men and women, from different races, and eventually from different factions of labor. It needed thirty-eight states to be ratified. At the time of another of my buttons, it was three states short.
That was when a campaign of disinformation cranked up in an effort to stop those three states from ratifying the amendment. The lies and fear-mongering were so successful that some of the ratifying states rescinded, and some of the rescinding states had that vetoed (opening a legislative can of worms). Even though the deadline was extended by presidential order (another legislative issue that remains unsettled), the amendment failed to pass. In the time since, it has gotten the thirty-eight states necessary for ratification if all the ratifying states are counted, but since the date passsed and the rescinding states present an issue that would have to be dealt with, reasoned counsel has suggested the ERA should start from scratch.
Don’t worry if you don’t believe women deserve equal rights and fear the rebirth of the amendment. As Covid has taught us, misinformation and disinformation (aka, lies and fear-mongering) are still quite effective at making people act against their own best interests. Even death is a risk they’ll take rather than temporarily wear a mask or get a vaccination (as most have done their entire lives without drama).
Here are another couple of my buttons from that time.
If I’m not mistaken, the “10” was from a set of stickers given with a blank green button to allow a countdown to the months left to ratify the amendment by its deadline.
The 59¢ button was how much a woman made at that time for each dollar a man made. Forty years later, that amount has stalled at 82¢. Progress? Let’s consider that.
More women now receive higher education and more training than they did forty years ago. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, in 2020, women outnumbered men in the workforce. Over the decades, women more frequently became either the only wage-earners in their homes or single adult heads of households.
Can we call any gender gap in pay “progress?”
I don’t. I suspect Covid has also disproportionately deceased the number of working women and increased the pay gap, and this will have a negative impact socially, culturally, and economically.
I hope those who are stripping women of their agency, autonomy, and privacy regarding their healthcare and well-being are simultaneously coming up with lots of solutions to address those negative impacts.
(Narrator: “They’re not.”)
They are not about solutions. They are about control and punishment.
Sadly, I think there will always be inequality – but it manifests itself in different ways to different people, so it never can be adequately addressed.
We keep trying though, don’t we?