Why the ERA failed: politics, women's rights, and the amending process of the constitution.Why the ERA Failed: Politics, Women's Rights The effort to secure equal rights for women and to remove gender discrimination from laws, institutions, and behavioral patterns. The women's rights movement began in the nineteenth century with the demand by some women reformers for the right to vote, known as suffrage, and , and the Amending Process of the Constitution. May Frances Berry. IndianaUniversity Press, $17.95. In thespring of 1981, when the Equal Rights Amendment had a little over a year of life left, I attended a meeting at which a psychologist psy·chol·o·gist n. A person trained and educated to perform psychological research, testing, and therapy. psychologist reported on interviews she had conducted in several states where the amendment had not been ratified rat·i·fy tr.v. rat·i·fied, rat·i·fy·ing, rat·i·fies To approve and give formal sanction to; confirm. See Synonyms at approve. . What we heard was disturbing. None of those interviewed identified with those they called "women's libbers' who were "trying to shove the ERA down their throats.' They agreed with feminists on issues like equal pay for equal work but felt the ERA proponents denigrated their regard for family life and their work as homemakers. The feminist reaction rangedfrom bewilderment be·wil·der·ment n. 1. The condition of being confused or disoriented. 2. A situation of perplexity or confusion; a tangle: a bewilderment of lies and half-truths. Noun 1. to pounding-the-table anger. Why were these women saying such nasty things about nice feminists who were trying to save them? No one admitted there was truth in what they said. We didn't respect their reservations about the ERA and didn't want to address their fears about losing traditional roles. No one suspected that we were going to lose the ERA in part because of our inability to understand and appreciate these feelings. Four years after the last ERAdeadline was missed, Mary Frances Berry Mary Frances Berry is the Geraldine R. Segal Professor of American Social Thought and Professor of History at the University of Pennsylvania and the former chairwoman of the United States Commission on Civil Rights. She is also the former board chair of Pacifica Radio. , a feminist, professor of history and law, and member of the U.S. Civil Rights Commission, examines these and other factors that led to the defeat of the ERA. She believes that constitutional amendments have been successful only when they were introduced during periods of progressive reform, when years of groundwork preceded their referral to the states for ratification The confirmation or adoption of an act that has already been performed. A principal can, for example, ratify something that has been done on his or her behalf by another individual who assumed the authority to act in the capacity of an agent. , and when a broad consensus on a state-by-state and even region-by-region basis existed for passage. The ERA, which was referred to the states just before a conservative era, met none of these requirements. Proponents had made no real plans for ratification in the states, and they underestimated the work needed to create a national consensus. Berry makes a good case for hertheory, though her view of the ERA campaign is a narrow one. She compacts 200 years of constitutional history into a terse Terse - Language for decryption of hardware logic. ["Hardware Logic Simulation by Compilation", C. Hansen, 25th ACM/IEEE Design Automation Conf, 1988]. 120 pages, with few anecdotes and little of the passion of the campaign. She doesn't make a case for or against the ERA and she doesn't discuss the conflict it stirred within the movement. |
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