Trouble for ERA

Equality of rights under the law shall not be denied nor abridged by the U.S. or by any state on account of sex.

The wording of the equal rights amendment (ERA) to the U.S. Constitution was not considered very controversial when the proposal passed the Senate last March. If anything, the bill seemed to be a simple doffing of the legislative hat in recognition of a battle already won. By the time the state legislatures recessed at the end of the year, 22 states had already ratified ERA, leaving only sixteen more needed for a three-fourths majority.

Yet the amendment has recently begun to encounter some strenuous opposition, much of it organized by a well-financed lobby called Stop ERA. Its principal argument is that ERA would abolish many legal safeguards that, in the past, have established and protected the woman's place in the home: the requirement that men support their families, Social Security benefits that widows receive from a husband's job and that, if a marriage fails, the wife gets alimony and child support.

Dim. One woman in particular who does not share the desire for equal status is Phyllis Schlafly, founder and prime mover of Stop ERA. The wife of a wealthy lawyer in Alton, Ill., and the mother of six children, Mrs. Schlafly first came to public attention in the 1960s with a right-wing treatise in support of Barry Goldwater's presidential candidacy, A Choice Not an Echo, and stayed there with a fiery monthly newsletter named The Schlafly Report (cost: $5 per year). With no lack of capital (she insists that her effort is financed from the proceeds of her newsletter), she has been flying about the country, appearing on talk shows, speaking before women's clubs, buttonholing old Republican contacts, testifying before legislators and quietly enlisting the support of local Roman Catholic lay groups and labor unions.

Mrs. Schlafly's tactics seem to be working. Of the states that have voted on ERA in 1973, Minnesota, Oregon, Wyoming and South Dakota have ratified it, but North Dakota, Oklahoma and Utah have defeated it outright, and at least five others have struck it down by more subtle means--Montana, Arkansas, Missouri, Mississippi and Virginia. Kansas and Nebraska, both of which passed it last year, are reconsidering their decisions. In short, the momentum of the amendment has been stopped, and it now seems dubious whether the 38 ratifications can be won this year. If the issue drags on into 1974, the prospects may become even dimmer.

Aside from Mrs. Schlafly's earnest arguments, various mixtures of props and propaganda have been marshaled against ERA. In Ohio, anti-ERA women handed legislators silver bullets to illustrate their conviction that they can take care of themselves without a constitutional amendment. In Minnesota, opponents tried to bat ERA away by handing out red fly swatters to legislators. In Oklahoma, Democrat John Monks helped defeat the bill by preaching from the Bible. "The good book says a woman should serve her husband," he told his colleagues. Arkansas State Senator Guy Hamilton ("Mutt") Jones put the matter a little differently: "Women are put on this earth to minister to the needs of miserable men," he argued. Marion Olson, chairwoman of a right-wing political party in Minnesota, offered yet another objection: "We don't want to turn our daughters into tigers and our sons into pansies. Nature did not intend men and women to be equal."

To combat such views and to map strategy for a new political action, activists in the feminist movement met in Houston last week for the first National Women's Political Caucus convention. The event drew 1,400 delegates from 48 states--government officials, editors, legislators, blacks, Chicanas, young and old, housewives and students. They came in everything from boots to buckskin, from outsized overalls to a flowing Indian sari. They were searching for a common program toward common goals, but at times they lost their way in partisan disputes between Republicans and Democrats. At the end, though, the convention had established a far broader base and brought attention to new talent.

Worth. The old stars--Gloria Steinem, Shirley Chisholm, Bella Abzug and Betty Friedan--willingly turned the podium over to some fresher faces. Among them: Philadelphia Councilwoman Dr. Ethel Allen ("I'm what's known as Philadelphia's fat Shirley Chisholm"), Colorado's new Democratic U.S. Representative, Pat Schroeder, 32, the mother of two preschoolers, and Baltimore Councilwoman Barbara Mikulski, who made a strong and witty plea that the convention not forget the blue-collar woman.

The woman who threw down the strongest challenge to the opponents of ERA, and who drew the heaviest applause, was Jill Ruckelshaus, 36, mother of five children under twelve and wife of Nixon's director of the Environmental Protection Agency. Mrs. Ruckelshaus addressed herself to "the hundreds of thousands of women in this country who aren't here, who don't want to be here, who don't understand why they should be here. We need to help those women, to raise their sense of worth." The question was whether the members of the Caucus could reach those women in time to convince them that equal rights would mean an opportunity rather than a threat.

Shirley Chisholm underscored the delicacy of that difficult task. "Some people wrongly see the Caucus participants as being 'antimale, anti-children and anti-family,' " she cautioned. "Very frankly, there have been some excesses in movement thinking. Children are more than a pile of dirt and diapers; families have provided love. This Caucus should not be the cutting edge of the women's movement, but the big umbrella over all."

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