{"id":1706,"date":"2019-08-01T09:22:10","date_gmt":"2019-08-01T09:22:10","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.americanyawp.com\/reader\/?page_id=1706"},"modified":"2019-08-01T09:22:10","modified_gmt":"2019-08-01T09:22:10","slug":"gloria-steinem-on-equal-rights-for-women-1970","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/www.americanyawp.com\/reader\/28-the-unraveling\/gloria-steinem-on-equal-rights-for-women-1970\/","title":{"rendered":"Gloria Steinem on Equal Rights for Women (1970)"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

The first Congressional\nhearing on the equal rights amendment (ERA) was held in 1923, but the push for\nthe amendment stalled until the 1960s, when a revived women\u2019s movement thrust\nit again into the national consciousness. Congress passed and sent to the\nstates for ratification the ERA on March 22, 1972. But it failed, stalling just\nthree states short of the required three-fourths needed for ratification.\nDespite popular support for the amendment, activists such as Phyllis Schlafly outmaneuvered\nthe amendment\u2019s supporters. In 1970, author Gloria Steinem argued that such\nopposition was rooted in outmoded ideas about gender.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

My name is Gloria Steinem. I am a writer and editor, and I\nam currently a member of the policy council of the Democratic committee. \u2026 <\/p>\n\n\n\n

During 12 years of working for a living, I have experienced\nmuch of the legal and social discrimination reserved for women in this country.\nI have been refused service in public restaurants, ordered out of public\ngathering places, and turned away from apartment rentals; all for the\nclearly-stated, sole reason that I am a woman. And all without the legal\nremedies available to blacks and other minorities. I have been excluded from\nprofessional groups, writing assignments on so-called \u201cunfeminine\u201d subjects\nsuch as politics, full participation in the Democratic Party, jury duty, and\neven from such small male privileges as discounts on airline fares. Most\nimportant to me, I have been denied a society in which women are encouraged, or\neven allowed to think of themselves as first-class citizens and responsible\nhuman beings.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

However, after 2 years of researching the status of American\nwomen, I have discovered that in reality, I am very, very lucky. Most women,\nboth wage-earners and housewives, routinely suffer more humiliation and\ninjustice than I do.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As a freelance writer, I don\u2019t work in the male-dominated\nhierarchy of an office. (Women, like blacks and other visibly different\nminorities, do better in individual professions such as the arts, sports, or\ndomestic work; anything in which they don\u2019t have authority over white males.) I\nam not one of the millions of women who must support a family. Therefore, I\nhaven\u2019t had to go on welfare because there are no day-care centers for my children\nwhile I work, and I haven\u2019t had to submit to the humiliating welfare inquiries\nabout my private and sexual life, inquiries from which men are exempt. I haven\u2019t\nhad to brave the sex bias of labor unions and employers, only to see my family\nsubsist on a median salary 40 percent less than the male median salary.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I hope this committee will hear the personal, daily\ninjustices suffered by many women\u2014professionals and day laborers, women\nhousebound by welfare as well as by suburbia. We have all been silent for too\nlong. But we won\u2019t be silent anymore.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The truth is that all our problems stem from the same sex\nbased myths. We may appear before you as white radicals or the middle-aged\nmiddle class or black soul sisters, but we are all sisters in fighting against\nthese outdated myths. Like racial myths, they have been reflected in our laws.\nLet me list a few.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

That woman are biologically inferior to men. In fact, an\nequally good case can be made for the reverse. \u2026 However, I don\u2019t want to prove\nthe superiority of one sex to another. That would only be repeating a male\nmistake. English scientists once definitively proved, after all, that the\nEnglish were descended from the angels, while the Irish were descended from the\napes; it was the rationale for England\u2019s domination of Ireland for more than a\ncentury. The point is that science is used to support current myth and\neconomics almost as much as the church was.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

What we do know is that the difference between two races or\ntwo sexes is much smaller than the differences to be found within each group.\nTherefore, in spite of the slide show on female inferiorities that I understand\nwas shown to you yesterday, the law makes much more sense when it treats\nindividuals, not groups bundled together by some condition of birth. \u2026<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Another myth, that women are already treated equally in this\nsociety. I am sure there has been ample testimony to prove that equal pay for\nequal work, equal chance for advancement, and equal training or encouragement\nis obscenely scarce in every field, even those\u2014like food and fashion\nindustries\u2014that are supposedly \u201cfeminine.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A deeper result of social and legal injustice, however, is\nwhat sociologists refer to as \u201cInternalized Aggression.\u201d Victims of aggression\nabsorb the myth of their own inferiority, and come to believe that their group\nis in fact second class. Even when they themselves realize they are not second\nclass, they may still think their group is, thus the tendency to be the only\nJew in the club, the only black woman on the block, the only woman in the\noffice.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Women suffer this second class treatment from the moment\nthey are born. They are expected to be, rather than achieve, to function\nbiologically rather than learn. A brother, whatever his intellect, is more\nlikely to get the family\u2019s encouragement and education money, while girls are often\npressured to conceal ambition and intelligence, to \u201cUncle Tom.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I interviewed a New York public school teacher who told me\nabout a black teenager\u2019s desire to be a doctor. With all the barriers in mind,\nshe suggested kindly that he be a veterinarian instead.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The same day, a high school teacher mentioned a girl who\nwanted to be a doctor. The teacher said, \u201cHow about a nurse?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2026<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We are 51 percent of the population; we are essentially\nunited on these issues across boundaries of class or race or age; and we may\nwell end by changing this society more than the civil rights movement. That is\nan apt parallel. We, too, have our right wing and left wing, our separatists,\ngradualists, and Uncle Toms. But we are changing our own consciousness, and\nthat of the country.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Source: U.S. Senate, The \u201cEqual Rights\u201d Amendment:\nHearings before the Subcommittee on Constitutional Amendments of the Committee\non the Judiciary<\/em>, 91st Cong., 2d sess., May 5-7, 1970, 331\u201335. Available\nonline via History Matters (http:\/\/historymatters.gmu.edu\/d\/7025\/<\/a>).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The first Congressional hearing on the equal rights amendment (ERA) was held in 1923, but the push for the amendment stalled until the 1960s, when a revived women\u2019s movement thrust it again into the national consciousness. Congress passed and sent to the states for ratification the ERA on March 22, 1972. But it failed, stalling […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"parent":819,"menu_order":6,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-1706","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.americanyawp.com\/reader\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/1706","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.americanyawp.com\/reader\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.americanyawp.com\/reader\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.americanyawp.com\/reader\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.americanyawp.com\/reader\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1706"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.americanyawp.com\/reader\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/1706\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1707,"href":"https:\/\/www.americanyawp.com\/reader\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/1706\/revisions\/1707"}],"up":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.americanyawp.com\/reader\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/819"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.americanyawp.com\/reader\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1706"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}