One Giant Leap For Womankind

It was an idea whose time had been a long season coming. Since 1923, a constitutional amendment proposing equal rights for women had languished in Congress, debated seriously only rarely. But last week, with a disparate array of midwives in attendance, the Equal Rights Amendment passed the Senate, 84 to 8, and was sent to the states for ratification. If approved by three-quarters of the states, it will become the 27th Amendment to the Constitution.

The final push was provided by growing feminist pressure in an election year; more than half of the country's registered voters are women. Although many women could not care less about the amendment, those who do came out in force. Representatives from such varied groups as the National Federation of Business and Professional Women's Clubs and the American Home Economics Association worked alongside militant Women's Liberationists. On the day of the vote, the Senate galleries were filled. Liz Carpenter, Lady Bird Johnson's former press secretary, played a latter-day Madame Defarge; while listening to the debate, she worked on a needlepoint design carrying the motto UPPITY WOMEN UNITE. Exercising her privilege of access to the Senate floor, Michigan Representative

Martha Griffiths, who shepherded the amendment to House approval last year, borrowed Edmund Muskie's desk and kept a tally on the voting.

The final battle centered on a series of crippling provisos put forth by Democrat Sam Ervin of North Carolina. Ervin feared that women would suffer hardships and dangers if the amendment passed. He tried to limit its scope to allow existing protective legislation to stand after passage. Ervin raised the specter of women "sent into combat, where they will be slaughtered or maimed by the bayonets, the bombs, the bullets, the hand grenades, the mines, the napalm, the poison gas and the shells of the enemy." Illinois' Adlai Stevenson III replied: "What we are doing is enunciating a principle in the Constitution of the U.S. There are and will be classifications based on sex which will be held not to deny or abridge any individual's equal rights." Each of the Ervin proposals was defeated.

The ratification process will have to be completed within seven years for the amendment to become law; the Hawaii legislature started the process by voting approval just 32 minutes after the Senate had acted. Nebraska, New Hampshire, Delaware, Iowa and Idaho followed suit within days.

Some laws will likely be struck down, others rewritten to apply to both sexes equally. Married women could retain their names or take the names of their husbands. Alimony could be available to either spouse; child-custody laws that specify a preference for the mother could become invalid. Many of the protective labor laws might become invalid; banning women from certain jobs because of the possibility of pregnancy could also be forbidden. Laws against prostitution could be jeopardized unless the customer is also subject to penalty.

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