WS 101 M/W- Cora Agatucci

Text of the EQUAL RIGHTS AMENDMENT:
"Section 1. Equality of Rights under the law shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or any state on account of sex.
"Section 2. The Congress shall have the power to enforce, by appropriate legislation, the provisions of this article.
"Section 3. This amendment shall take effect two years after the date of ratification."
"The Equal Rights Amendment was written in 1921 by suffragist Alice Paul [1885-1977: Paul's biography]. It has been introduced in Congress every session since 1923. It passed Congress in 1972, but failed to be ratified by the necessary thirty-eight states by the July 1982 deadline. It was ratified by thirty-five states.
Supporters contend that the ERA is needed because the equal protection clause of the Fourteenth Amendment does not provide adequate protection against sex discrimination.
Opponents claim that the ERA will provide no benefits, and may hurt women."
(Larisa Kofman, Univ. of Maryland).

The giant flower paintings of Georgia O'Keeffe (1887-1986) were first exhibited. O'Keeffe was born in Sun Prairie, Wisconsin, into a family which emphasized education for women. By the 8^th grade, Georgia declared, "I am going to be an artist," though she met with early discouragement in pursuit of her career. However, in 1916, Alfred Stieglitz, a pioneer in photograpic art, was introduced to her drawing--"purest, finest, sincerest things that had entered 291 in a long while", he said and exhibited 10 in his 291 gallery. "At last," he exclaimed, "a woman on paper!" An O'Keeffe Calla Lily painting sold for $25,000 in 1928, and drew wide media attention. Georgia's financial success would finally prove to her that an artist could make a living with a paintbrush. In 1962, Georgia was elected to the 50 member American Academy of Arts and Letters, the nation's highest honor society for people in the arts. (For more links)

Alice Paul founded the World Party for Equal Rights for Women, and during the 1920s and 1930s, focused on equality for women all over the world. Paul also worked to achieve world peace, which she believed could be brought about if women played an active role in world governments.

Zora Neale Hurston (1891-1960), acclaimed "living anthropologist" and writer, studied African-American folklore by traveling around the American South and the West Indies in the 1930s, asking about local myths, legends, and traditional practices. Hurston was the most widely published black woman of her day--the author of more than fifty articles and short stories as well as four novels, two books on folklore, an autobiography, and some plays. At the height of her success she was known as the "Queen of the Harlem Renaissance." Yet her success brought no financial security, and Hurston died in a welfare home and was buried in an unmarked grave. In 1973 novelist and poet Alice Walker placed a stone marker in Fort Pierce at the place believed to be Hurston's burial plot, honoring "Zora Neale Hurston, A Genius of the South." See also Alice Dunbar's contributions to the Harlem Renaissance.)

Mary Eliza Church Terrell (1863-1954), American social activist, cofounder
and first president of the National Association of Colored Women, gained entrance to the Washington chapter of the American Association of University Women, bringing to an end its policy of excluding blacks. Terrell was an early civil-rights advocate, an educator, an author, and a lecturer on woman suffrage and black rights.

On the suggestion of Esther Peterson, director of the Women’s Bureau of the Department of Labor, President John F. Kennedy set up the first national Commission on the Status of Women in 1962. In 1963, the commission issued a report detailing employment discrimination, unequal pay, legal inequality, and insufficient support services for working women. In the 1960s, the "second wave" of the women’s rights movement revived the ERA debate. However, the majority of the commission members opposed the ERA, primarily on the grounds that equal rights were already guaranteed in the Constitution.

A Russian woman, Valentina Tereshkova, became the first woman in space when she accompanied a team of astronauts. A second Russian, Svetlana Savitskaya, flew in 1981, and before astronaut Sally Ride became the first U.S. woman to fly in space in 1982. Ride became a symbol of hope and progress for American wome, and since her historic flight in 1983, a number of other women have proven themselves on U.S. space shuttle missions.

Indira Gandhi (1917-1984), Indian political leader, became the leader of the Congress Party and then prime minister of India, the world's largest democracy.

Gloria Steinem inaugurated a fifteen-year editorship of Ms. magazine.

The ERA measure won congressional approval in 1972 as the 27th Amendment, but it had to be ratified by at least 38 states to become law. Under the leadership of female politicians like U.S. representative Bella Abzug of New York, and groups such as the National Organization for Women (NOW), supporters of the ERA campaigned to gain passage of the amendment at the state level.

President Nixon, in his human resources message to Congress said the administration "will continue" to support ratification of the [Equal Rights) amendment ". . . so that American women. . . need never again be denied equal opportunity." However, the administration did not go all out for ratification, because of an alleged fear that if the White House pressed aggressively for
ratification, it might generate more opposition to the amendment on the ground that the President was overstepping his authority.(See The Feminist Chronicles - 1973: Events)

By the time Augusta Baker (b. 1911) retired from her position as New York Public Library librarian in 1974, her efforts had ensured that libraries and bookstores gave African American and other "minority" children today have a wide choice of suitable books to read throughout the U.S. When Baker started work as a young librarian in New York in 1937, she found few children's books portraying black people in a realistic manner. During the next thirty-seven years Baker corrected this situation, not only by adding appropriate books to the New York Public Library's collection, but also by meeting with authors and publishers to get more African American stories written.

By 1974, some 1,000 colleges and universities were offering women's studies courses and over 80 had full-fledged women's studies programs, some offering bachelor's degrees in this area of study. A few offered master's degrees in Women's Studies. See Joan Korenman's Guide to Women's Studies Programs in the U.S. and Around the World.

In "Declaration on the Question of the Admission of Women to the Ministerial Priesthood," the Sacred Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith asserts: "For these reasons, in execution of a mandate received form the Holy See and echoing the declaration which he himself made in his letter of November 30, 1976, the Sacred Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith judges it necessary to recall that the Church, in fidelity to the example of the Lord, does not consider herself authorized to admit women to priestly ordination. The Sacred Congregation deems it opportune at the present juncture to explain this position of the Church. . . . since it can be of help in deepening understanding of the respective roles of men and women." [From the Catholic Information Network (CIN), 1996].

Nawal El Saadawi (1931- ) , Egyptian doctor, author and feminist, publishes The Naked Face of the Arab Woman. Concerned with the Arab female psyche, she has set out to liberate the mind of the Arab woman, her sexuality, as well as legal position. Saadawi's writings were for a long time considered dangerous for the society and were banished in her native Egypt. Saadawi has been prevented from working as a doctor, and she was jailed from 1981 to 1982. More recently, she has been working in rural Egypt, with information work directed at women, in order to liberate them economically from male dominance.

Mairead Corrigan (b. 1944) and Betty Williams (b. 1943)
Irish social activists, win the Nobel Peace Prize and are credited with reducing the death toll in Northern Ireland by half. Forming Women for Peace, later renamed the Peace People Organization, Corrigan and Williams sought to end the violent conflict between Protestant British loyalists and the Catholic Irish Republican Army racking Northern Ireland: "We want for our children, as we want for ourselves, our lives at home, at work, and at play to be lives of joy and peace."