Phyllis Shlafly Report Against The Equal Rights Amendment

The debate over the passage of the Equal Rights Amendment fractured Second Wave feminism along class, religious, and geographic lines while setting up Third Wave Feminism for its lack of intersectionality.

Second Wave feminists who campaigned for the ERA were mostly middle and upper class educated women, leaving behind the concerns of working class women. Gloria Steinem, a noted feminist and proponent of the ERA, for example testified on behalf of the ERA to the Judiciary Committee subcommittee dedicated to the ERA. Steinem was born in Toledo, Ohio to a middle class family. Her father’s mother was a dedicated member of the first wave feminist/suffragette movement and Steinem’s mother encouraged her to read and learn. Steinem then attended Smith

College in the 1950s and became a freelance writer for various magazines and publications later on (“Gloria Steinem”). Steinem was in the perfect position to be an activist for the ERA– she was white, middle class, and college educated. She knew that there were opportunities for her professionally but that she would have a harder time taking advantage of them as a women. In 1970, when Steinem testified in favor of the ERA, she claimed that the ERA would close the wage gap, stop discrimination against women in hiring processes, and would elevate women’s positions in the eyes of society (Steinem). However, Steinem’s perspective of what would help or harm women was limited to her own personal knowledge. Born to white, middle class parents, Steinem had no way of understanding the complexities of working class economics. Many union representatives testified against the ERA to the same congressional subcommittee as Steinem, yet she dismissed their concerns over how the ERA would impact working class women. Steinem claimed that since these union representatives supported women’s equality then, even though they were testifying against the ERA, the reps supported the ERA because the ERA was designed to grant equality to men and women. Steinem dismissed their concerns over potential negative ramifications for working class women because she could not understand their fears. She also trivialized their opposition to the amendment by claiming that by fighting among women over the ERA, the union reps were sabotaging the best way to improve conditions for women. Instead of arguing over the ERA, the union reps should join Steinem in the crusade for women’s rights (Steinem). Steinem clearly believed that she was in the right and that there was no other option for women’s equality except her narrow perception of what was correct. The union reps certainly had their own agenda in the ERA struggle because it was their duty to do what would benefit the union, but by the same token, unions are meant to protect the workers. If an organization that represents hundreds, if not thousands, of women workers is against an amendment designed to help women, then there is clearly a reason. Perhaps, in the union’s eyes, there was a flaw in the way the amendment was written or there was a fear over potential unintended ramifications. Either way, Steinem (and many other prominent white, middle class feminists) made a mistake in brushing aside the concerns of groups designed to protect workers.
On the other side of the ERA congressional hearing was union representatives Ruth Miller and Myra Wolfgang who argued that the ERA would hurt working class women. Miller believed that the ERA was to the detriment of women performing unskilled labor, citing the example of California’s minimum wage law. In California, the minimum wage was $1.30 an hour, however the minimum wage was $1.65 an hour for women. She also described how the minimum wage was often not applicable to farm hands, one of the most common unskilled labor positions for women in California. Thus, Miller argued that the ERA would strip women of the special protections, in this case higher minimum wages, afforded to them by law (“Union Official Ruth Miller Opposes the Equal Rights Amendment (1970).”). In the same vein, Wolfgang argued that the ERA would provide women equality to men but that it would be equality to a lower standard. She argued that since special protections afforded to women (like California’s high minimum wage) would no longer be allowed, everyone would suffer because no portion of the population would be benefiting from protective laws. She continued to say that the majority of American women were not feminists because they could not afford to be and that feminists who argued in favor of the ERA were naïve. In Wolfgang’s opinion, since the ERA would hurt working class women in the name of equality, in the end, it would hurt all women more than it could hope to adjust social inequality (“Union Official Myra Wolfgang Argues Against the Equal Rights Amendment (1970).”). Again, the irony here is that rather than working together to meet the common goal of improving the lives of women, the pro-ERA and anti-ERA factions were unable to come together and find a solution. The mostly white, middle class pro-ERA faction were at least taking positive action to pass the amendment that they believed would help women’s rights. The anti-ERA faction sought to prevent the ERA from being passed, rather than coming up with a solution that both sides of the issue could support. Perhaps the union representatives would have passed the ERA had it contained the Hayden rider, a clause that allowed the passage and implementation of special protection laws for women, however it is impossible to know whether or not Miller, Wolfgang, and the unions would have supported it. It is known, however, that many feminists, especially the National Women’s Party, refused to support the passage of the ERA with the Hayden rider ("Historical Overview of the National Woman’s Party.").
At the same time that Steinem was testifying for the ERA, the National Organization for Women (NOW) was having trouble connecting to the same demographic that Steinem ignored– working class women. NOW was founded in 1966 by women frustrated by the lack of progress in women’s rights since President Kennedy’s 1961 President’s Commission on the Status of Women in the United States. Betty Friedan took charge of the organization and was elected its first president, a great deal in part due to her visibility in the media as the author of The Feminine Mystique. NOW’s platforms included reproductive rights, economic and social equality, passing the ERA, and more (Purdy). One important figure to the founding of NOW was Pauli Murray, an often forgotten black, female Yale professor. She and Betty Friedan were the two main cofounders of NOW, but Murray’s involvement is often lost, perhaps because she was black, perhaps because she is also considered a civil rights activist, perhaps because she died in 1985– long before Betty Friedan. Luckily for Murray, her family had escaped the stereotypical (yet often true) expectation of black families to be poor– her father and aunt were both teachers, so Murray grew up middle class and was a college graduate (“Pauli Murray Project”). This unfortunately put her in the same position as Friedan– unable to truly grasp the concerns of working class women. They could protest and rally and recruit women all they wanted, but they could not find someone to explain to them what working class women needed and were concerned about. NOW also generally attracted women who already considered themselves to be feminists, at least partially due to its well known leaders being publically active feminists. The problem with attracting mostly feminists to an organization for women was that, at the time, most women did not consider themselves to be feminists. There was a stereotype of second wave feminists as bra-burning, fun killers which did not appeal to younger women (Murphy). These young women might have been working (by choice or by circumstance), but they felt no alliance with the women of NOW. Even in 2016, many young women refuse the title feminist, claiming that they believe in equal rights and equal pay but that feminists do not represent them. NOW’s commitment to a liberal agenda, including abortion rights and not just the ERA, also alienated many southern and conservative women, discouraging them from joining the fight for the ERA because they were unwilling to ally themselves with an organization that was clearly against their religious and moral values (Steiner).
Working parallel to Steinem and NOW’s efforts to promote and pass the ERA, US Representative Martha Griffiths based her argument for the ERA in the effect of laws. Griffiths argued that so called protectionary laws actually put women at a workplace disadvantage because they limited what women could be required to do without each individual woman’s input. Many such laws limited the amount of weight a woman could be required to lift at work or how many overtime hours a woman could put in (Whitney 36). This put women at a disadvantage when being hired because it was often easier for companies to simply give the unskilled job to a man who had no such restrictions. This was especially unfair because the laws did not take into account if a woman was willing and able to lift heavy objects or to put in many hours of overtime. The so called protectionary laws were based in sexist ideas about a woman’s strength and the notion that a woman should be at home caring for a family. Lawmakers at the time were almost all men, so it would logically follow that they would apply their misguided beliefs to writing laws. The laws were likely intended to protect women but ended up putting them at a hiring disadvantage. Griffiths also argued that had the 14th Amendment (which prohibits discriminatory laws) been enforced for women that the ERA would not be necessary (Steiner). However, based on her previous explanation of how protective laws for women actually damaged their standing in hiring and in jobs, Griffiths clearly did not believe that the 14th Amendment had been applied to women.
Working class women, in general, were either politically neutral or were against the ERA because of practical fears of possible repercussions of the ERA. Many of the women who were neutral on the ERA simply did not see the necessity of the ERA. They believed that the ERA was designed mostly to help middle class women who already had more privilege than they, the working class women, did. In this vein, they did not believe that the ERA would actually help them, rather it would look nice on paper without actually achieving the goal of helping women. Middle class women often discussed the ERA in terms of achieving equality with men academically and in the workplace, however the scholarship decisions and managerial position hirings that would be affected by the ERA would never apply to working class women. These women needed to make money immediately, rather than go to college, so they would never be applying for scholarships, and the women lacked the credentials to get managerial positions because they never attended college, so the ERA held no real draw for them. Working class women were also concerned about potential fiscal ramifications. Women, particularly single mothers, were worried about a potential loss of child support money from divorced husbands as well as a loss of welfare money (Whitney). It is also notable that some industries worked to suppress support for the ERA. The textile industry which traditionally employed mostly women and employed women at wages lower than those paid to male laborers worked to keep its workers from supporting the ERA as a way to maintain its system of underpaying its workers.
The ERA divided women and the American population deeper along religious lines over the debate about its passage than ever before.

Phyllis Schlafly was a conservative, Republican, Catholic woman who published her own newsletter– “The Phyllis Schlafly Report.” In 1986, she published a piece against the ERA in her newsletter. In her piece, she claimed that the ERA would create protections for the gay community, institute abortion rights, and prevent single sex colleges. She also believed that the ERA would hurt women’s positions in society by destroying alimony laws and forcing women to register for the draft (“The Phyllis Schlafly Report Against the Equal Rights Amendment.”). She appealed to her conservative, Christian audience by claiming that the ERA would promote homosexuality and abortion (both condemned by major Christian denominations at the time) even though there was no direct textual evidence. Her claim that the ERA would prevent colleges from accepting only one gender and force women to register for the draft were more plausible side effects, however they were also unproven because no such wording was directly evident in the text of the ERA. Schlafly designed her argument to appeal to other Americans who believed in traditional gender roles and social norms. The southern Christian housewife reading “The Phyllis Schlafly Report” did not want to be registered for the draft. Schlafly also played to the idea that the wife took care of the kids and did not work and then she would need alimony if she and her husband were to divorce. Religious groups in the US were against the ERA for similar reasons. Roman Catholics testified to Congress that the ERA would destroy families because it would drag women away from their duties to maintain the home and a moral environment (Whitney). The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, more commonly known as the Mormon Church, states that it believes in equality between men and women but that the mother and father were

meant to have different roles. Similarly to Schlafly, the Mormon Church believed that the ERA would lead to a slippery slope of social change that it did not agree with including the legalization of gay marriage, legalization of abortions, and the addition of women (including married women) to the draft ("The Church and the Proposed Equal Rights Amendment: A Moral Issue.").
Geographically speaking, support for the ERA was generally split across current “red” state and “blue” state boundaries. Current “red” states usually vote for the Republican candidate in a presidential election and current “blue” states usually vote for the Democratic candidate in a presidential election, however in the 1960s, the political parties had different ideologies. Some current “red” states voted Democratic in the 1960s. The ideologies of the party, not the ideologies of the people are what changed. As a result, support for the ERA was weakest in the Midwest and South where people generally maintained more conservative ideas. States that never supported the ERA were Alabama, Arizona, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Illinois, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, Nevada, North Carolina, Utah, and Virginia. States that rescinded support of the ERA were Idaho, Kentucky, Nebraska, South Dakota, and Tennessee. These states are mostly red states with a large number being Southern (generally a place with more Christian fundamentalism) and Utah being heavily Mormon– both of which were key opposition groups to the ERA (Francis). The shifting ideologies of the parties actually represents the rift among the American public very well. Southern states that maintained a conservative ideology now mostly vote Republican and more liberal Northern, especially Northeastern and west coast, states generally vote Democrat.