Full transcript
0:00We reject the anti-family goals of the Equal Rights Amendment.
0:04The American women do not want abortion.
0:06They do not want lesbian privileges.
0:09And they do not want universal child care in the hands of the government.
0:15I just took on the whole feminist movement.
0:18Young people may never have heard of the ERA.
0:21And at the same time, some the issues that the ERA was meant to address, are still on our
0:27lips today.
0:29It’s delightful to know in the Constitution that all men are created equal.
0:33But, hello.
0:38Women are no longer Miss or Mrs. but Ms. Capital M., small S., period.
0:45So many women are starting to work these days it’s being billed as the most significant
0:49social development of the century.
0:53As the role of women was changing in the 1970s, the campaign to pass the Equal Rights Amendment
0:58began in earnest.
1:00As proposed it read: equality of rights under the law shall not be denied or abridged by
1:05the United States or by any state on account of sex.
1:08The Equal Rights Amendment would strike down all state laws that discriminate against women,
1:12in the home, in school and on the job.
1:15People would say, 'well, why should women get equal pay?'
1:18We were still fighting for even the concept that women should get equal pay.
1:22They used to laugh at us, saying, 'women don’t want to be doctors.
1:25They want to marry one.'
1:29Right?
1:31Eleanor Smeal helped lead the effort to pass the ERA.
1:35The amendment didn’t directly address the wage gap, but she believed it would shape
1:39more laws that did.
1:41In almost every Congress since 1923, there has been proposed a Constitutional amendment
1:47to guarantee equal rights for women.
1:49Well today, it finally won approval.
1:51Proclaiming once and for all that women have all the same rights as that other sex.
1:57The agreement now goes to the states and must be ratified by 38 of them.
2:01Oh, we were all very jubilant.
2:03We were on the steps of the Senate, so excited.
2:07It passed, it was going out to the states.
2:10It was widely supported, among Democrats and Republicans, including President Nixon and
2:14his wife Pat.
2:16Nebraska today became the second state to ratify the Equal Rights Amendment.
2:20Minnesota and Oregon ratified…
2:21Vermont…
2:22In Connecticut…
2:23Washington became the 29th state to ratify the Equal Rights Amendment today.
2:27Surely, you know, this was just so obvious to be included in the Constitution that it
2:33wouldn’t be a battle.
2:35We’ll talk about all these things with Phyllis Schlafly.
2:37Would you welcome Mrs. Schlafly.
2:41Phyllis Schlafly became the public face of the anti-ERA campaign.
2:45One of the first things that the Equal Rights Amendment would do is to invalidate the state laws that
2:51make it the obligation of the husband to support his wife.
2:55ERA was an amendment pushed by the feminists.
2:58And I thought, 'well this is, this is absolutely crazy.'
3:02I get fed up with the women’s liberationists running down motherhood and saying that it’s
3:07a menial, degrading career and that the home is a prison from which women should be liberated
3:13and brought out into this wonderful workforce.
3:16She understood how to manipulate the media.
3:19And the idea of framing herself as a wronged housewife, who’d kind of been flushed out
3:24of, you know, the kitchen where she really wanted to be, was absolutely brilliant.
3:29Why if you’re so shot with motherhood aren’t you staying home being a mother?
3:33Everything I do, I do in the home.
3:34I’m out about one day a week on a television program like this, and I think they’re capable
3:38of getting their breakfast that morning without me.
3:41She was the mother of six, an author and conservative Republican who’d run for Congress – and
3:46lost – twice.
3:48Phyllis Schlafly is someone who came out of the Goldwater movement, whose connection with
3:52conservatives of all stripes, all over the country were matchless.
3:56She had a rolodex like nobody’s business, probably as big as a beach ball.
4:00Mrs. Schlafly, in a well organized and financed campaign has been flying around the country,
4:06inspiring opposition groups such as this one in Dade County.
4:10I think she’s probably the best political organizer we’ve seen in American history.
4:15The anti-amendment mail started coming in.
4:19One legislator got 50 letters in a day.
4:22Opponents saw it as a sinister plot to subject women to the draft, unisex toilets and possible
4:28loss of alimony.
4:29Some said it smelled of communism.
4:33Schlafly’s campaign slowed down the rate of ratification.
4:37Several states even took back their votes.
4:39Vote them out. Vote them out.
4:42The debate raged in statehouses across the
4:44country, but perhaps nowhere was it more contentious than in Illinois – Schlafly’s home state.
4:50Well, it’s probably hard for you to realize how big it was media-wise and politically.
5:01Thank you Mr. Speaker and members of the Congress.
5:02It just consumed the Illinois legislature for 10 years.
5:07I really got tired of going to Springfield.
5:09But I went.
5:11We were there every day.
5:14And we so outnumbered our opposition.
5:17And we had, you know, every major women’s group in the United States.
5:21My responsibility was to be in charge of the Equal Rights Amendment.
5:25The male legislators, particularly those in their 60s and 70s, just couldn’t accept
5:31that a woman could be a lobbyist.
5:32They would just presume that I was my boss’s secretary.
5:37As a lobbyist for the Illinois Education Association, Paula Purdue observed Phyllis Schlafly up
5:42close.
5:44She would have 30 to 50 people a day with fresh bread and fresh pie.
5:53Of course legislators all want to eat.
5:56And, you know, when you get fresh pie everyday, it didn’t get old.
6:01We brought a loaf of homemade bread to every legislator.
6:05So the feminists looked upon that as a dirty trick.
6:10While this whole thing was going on she literally earned a law degree in her spare time.
6:15And it seemed she never ran out of arguments.
6:18Women would have to be drafted, just like men and put in military combat, just like
6:22men.
6:23People would get in touch with her, you know, and say, you know, it wouldn’t do that.
6:29She would say, oh, thank you so much.
6:30And then she would just go to the next place and say exactly the same thing.
6:34They want to give the homosexuals and the lesbians the same dignity as husbands and
6:38wives.
6:39ERA has nothing to do with abortion, it has nothing to do with homosexuality, but they
6:44tie these emotional issues to it and it scares people.
6:51By 1977, Schlafly’s anti-ERA campaign had aligned with Evangelical, Catholic and Mormon
6:57faith groups.
6:58In politics, everything is about coalitions and these groups are learning to work together.
7:04By 1977, there really is no daylight between issues like the ERA, gay rights and abortion.
7:12And the reason Phyllis Schlafly is such an important figure in this is, she’s able
7:16to encompass all these threads, and bring them together.
7:20I am informed that there are 15,000 inside and several thousand more who have, unfortunately,
7:26were turned away.
7:28The coalition gathered in Houston, Texas that November.
7:34They did so because across town about 20,000 women were attending the first ever convention
7:39promoting equality between the sexes.
7:42This is the time that we will make women and men share equally in the greatness of America.
7:48ERA, ERA, ERA!
7:54And on that stage, you saw the First Lady of the United States, Rosalynn Carter, the
7:58previous First Lady, Republican Betty Ford, this was a bipartisan group of people, and
8:04they were all advocating very strongly for the Equal Rights Amendment.
8:09Both parties in the 1970s still had liberal factions and conservative factions.
8:14And one of the things that the ERA hastens is this sorting into Republican equals conservative
8:21and Democrats equal liberal.
8:25I know that you have the energy and the dedication to defeat this assault on the family, you
8:32can turn back this tide all across the country.
8:36If you stay with us, the Equal Rights Amendment will die.
8:47As the 1980 presidential election approached, the emerging religious right threw its support
8:52behind Ronald Reagan.
8:54At the convention conservatives were seated as delegates on the platform committee.
9:00Chairman John Tower barely had time to gavel the platform resolutions committee to order
9:04this morning, before the single most controversial issue the committee must deal with surfaced:
9:09the Equal Rights Amendment.
9:11With Schlafly looking on, the party would step to the right.
9:15They repositioned the party to be the party against abortion, and the party against gay
9:21rights, and the party against the Equal Rights Amendment.
9:24They voted to end the Republican party’s 40 years of support for the Equal Rights Amendment.
9:29While retreating from the party’s past support for the ERA, the subcommittee endorsed a plank
9:34that would strengthen the party’s opposition to legalized abortion.
9:40Within two years of Reagan taking office, the final deadline expired.
9:4435 states had ratified – three short of what was needed to change the Constitution.
9:50It is June 30th and at midnight tonight the Equal Rights Amendment becomes, at least for
9:55now, a lost cause.
9:56It was a tremendous victory.
9:59And of course we assumed that God was on our side.
10:03The anti-ERA side won this particular battle, but I don’t think anyone would doubt who
10:10won the war.
10:11Women take it as a matter of course that there’s more to life than being someone’s wife.
10:19That’s one of the biggest changes in world history.
10:22We’ve reached a milestone.
10:25First time, the first time in our nation’s history that a woman will be a major party’s
10:35nominee.
10:37Slowly but surely more and more women are getting elected.
10:41And women are now in a higher position in corporations.
10:46The fight goes on.
10:47But we’re getting closer.
10:49From reproductive rights to wages, the conversation continues.
10:53I think that we have some very good laws on the books and they help us a great deal to
10:59require equal pay for equal work.
11:02And yet, we still don’t see equality in terms of the bottom line, in terms of wages.
11:08Hill’s research shows that women’s wages rose steadily in the 1980s and 1990s as they
11:14graduated from college and entered the workforce in record numbers.
11:18But around 2000, progress stalled.
11:21Today women make 80 cents for every dollar a man earns.
11:26Women are still making more of an investment in education than ever before, but we’re
11:31not seeing their wages continue to rise.
11:34In fact, they’re stagnant.
11:35And then we see for Hispanic and black women, it’s a lot less.
11:40What I learned with pain over time is how profound the economic resistance was to equal
11:51pay.
11:52I mean, people were making millions and millions of dollars, and still are, off paying female
11:58human beings of all races quite unequally compared to white men.
12:02That right there is enough to fight like hell for the Equal Rights Amendment.
12:07For Illinois state legislator Heather Steans, the fight today is about righting a past wrong.
12:12She re-introduced the ERA in the Illinois Senate.
12:16I really think most of my colleagues couldn’t even believe that it would be an issue of
12:20discussion at this point in time.
12:21Why would anybody possibly hesitate to vote yes on that?
12:25But we still had no votes.
12:28The measure finally passed.
12:30More than three decades after Phyllis Schlafly made the case against it.
12:34I think American women are the most fortunate people on the face of the Earth.
12:38We don’t need any legislation to say any more than that.