Read complete books and articles on: Equal Rights Amendment

Feminism - movement for the political, social, and educational equality of women with men; the movement has occurred mainly in Europe and the United States. It has its roots in the humanism of the 18th cent. and in the Industrial Revolution. Feminist issues range from access to employment, education, child care, contraception, and abortion, to equality in the workplace, changing family roles

For the political aspects of feminism, see woman suffrage.

History

Women traditionally had been regarded as inferior to men physically and intellectually. Both law and theology had ordered their subjection. Women could not possess property in their own names, engage in business, or control the disposal of their children or even of their own persons. Although Mary Astell and others had pleaded earlier for larger opportunities for women, the first feminist document was Mary Wollstonecraft's Vindication of the Rights of Women (1792). In the French Revolution, women's republican clubs demanded that liberty, equality, and fraternity be applied regardless of sex, but this movement was extinguished for the time by the Code Napoléon.

In North America, although Abigail Adams and Mercy Otis Warren pressed for the inclusion of women's emancipation in the Constitution, the feminist movement really dates from 1848, when Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Lucretia Coffin Mott, and others, in a women's convention at Seneca Falls, N.Y., issued a declaration of independence for women, demanding full legal equality, full educational and commercial opportunity, equal compensation, the right to collect wages, and the right to vote. Led by Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan Brownell Anthony, the movement spread rapidly and soon extended to Europe.

Little by little, women's demands for higher education, entrance into trades and professions, married women's rights to property, and the right to vote were conceded. In the United States after woman suffrage was won in 1920, women were divided on the question of equal standing with men (advocated by the National Woman's party) versus some protective legislation; various forms of protective legislation had been enacted in the 19th cent., e.g., limiting the number of hours women could work per week and excluding women from certain high-risk occupations.

In 1946 the UN Commission on the Status of Women was established to secure equal political rights, economic rights, and educational opportunities for women throughout the world. In the 1960s feminism experienced a rebirth, especially in the United States. The National Organization for Women (NOW), formed in 1966, had over 400 local chapters by the early 1970s. NOW, the National Women's Political Caucus, and other groups pressed for such changes as abortion rights, federally supported child care centers, equal pay for women, the occupational upgrading of women, the removal of all legal and social barriers to education, political influence, and economic power for women.

With the leadership of women such as Bella Abzug, Betty Friedan, and Gloria Steinem, the Equal Rights Amendment was pushed through Congress in 1972, but by 1982 it fell short of ratification. While Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972 prohibited discrimination based on sex, the Roe v. Wade court decision, legalizing abortion, energized an antiabortion, antifeminist backlash. Nevertheless, the movement begun in the 1960s resulted in a large number of women moving into the workplace (59.8% of civilian women over age 16 were working in 1997, compared to 37.7% in 1960) and in broad changes in society.

Bibliography

See J. S. Mill, The Subjection of Women (1867); S. de Beauvoir, The Second Sex (tr. 1952, repr. 1968); B. Friedan, The Feminine Mystique (1963); G. Greer, The Female Eunuch (1970); K. Millett, Sexual Politics (1970); J. Hole and E. Levine, Rebirth of Feminism (1971); E. Janeway, Man's World, Woman's Place (1971); J. B. Elshtain, The Family in Political Thought (1982); D. Spender, ed., Feminist Theorists (1984); J. S. Chafetz and A. B. Dworkin, Female Revolt (1986); A. C. Rich, Of Woman Born (1986); H. L. Moore, Feminism and Anthropology (1988); B. Aptheker, Tapestries of Life: Women's Work, Women's Consciousness (1989); N. F. Cott, Grounding of Modern Feminism (1989); A. Ferguson, Blood at the Root (1989); W. L. O'Neill, Feminism in America (1989); D. E. Smith, The Everyday World as Problematic (1989); S. L. Bartky, Femininity and Domination (1990); M. Jacobs et al. Body/Politics: Women and the Discourses of Science (1990); S. Ganew, A Reader in Feminist Knowledge (1991); E. Cunningham, The Return of The Goddess: A Divine Comedy (1992); B. S. Anderson, Joyous Greetings: The First International Women's Movement, 1830–1860 (2000); R. Rosen, The World Split Open: How the Modern Women's Movement Changed America (2000).

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12 of the Best Books and Articles on: Equal Rights Amendment

as selected by Questia librarians

1.

Why ERA Failed: Politics, Women's Rights, and the Amending Process of the Constitution » Read Now
by Mary Frances Berry. 147 pgs.

Collections: History, Entire Library
2.

Necromancing the Equal Rights Amendment, in Constitutional Commentary » Read Now
by Brannon P. Denning, John R. Vile. 10 pgs.

Collections: Entire Library

...Necromancing the Equal Rights Amendment. by Brannon P. Denning...of Congress approved the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA) by the necessary two-thirds...Twenty-Seventh...
3.

Women's Rights ("ERA" begins on p. 170) » Read Now
by Christine A. Lunardini. 220 pgs.

Collections: Entire Library

"... an excellent, involving title which provides a great deal of documented research on the nature of and changes affecting women's rights in this country". -- The Bookwatch
The women's movement in America is not a recent phenomenon. In this clear and comprehensive reference work, the author...
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"... an excellent, involving title which provides a great deal of documented research on the nature of and changes affecting women's rights in this country". -- The Bookwatch
The women's movement in America is not a recent phenomenon. In this clear and comprehensive reference work, the author chronicles the achievements and setbacks in the 200-year struggle for equality for women. Readers will discover the profound social impact the movement has had on American culture and society as they review a wide variety of topics and events. These range from women's efforts to keep the economy intact during the Revolutionary era to the present-day challenges of sex discrimination and work-related issues. Also featured are the biographies of women who have played key roles in the struggle for women's rights, as well as a fascinating chronology of the women's movement. The text is enhanced with photos and illustrations, and a glossary and detailed bibliography are also included. Women's Rights will give readers new insights into one of the most complicated issues of our time and will help them understand that equality is clearly an ongoing struggle.
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4.

The Paradox of Change: American Women in the 20th Century (Chap. 3 "Women's Rights and Ideology: The ERA") » Read Now
by William H. Chafe. 247 pgs.

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When William Chafe's The American Woman was published in 1972, it was hailed as a breakthrough in the study of women in this century. Bella Abzug praised it as "a remarkable job of historical research," and Alice Kessler-Harris called it "an extraordinarily useful synthesis of material about...
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When William Chafe's The American Woman was published in 1972, it was hailed as a breakthrough in the study of women in this century. Bella Abzug praised it as "a remarkable job of historical research," and Alice Kessler-Harris called it "an extraordinarily useful synthesis of material about 20th-century women." But much has happened in the last two decades--both in terms of scholarship, and in the lives of American women. With The Paradox of Change, Chafe builds on his classic work, taking full account of the events and scholarship of the last fifteen years, as he extends his analysis into the 1990s with the rise of feminism and the New Right. Chafe conveys all the subtleties of women's paradoxical position in the United States today, showing how women have gradually entered more fully into economic and political life, but without attaining complete social equality or economic justice. Despite the gains achieved by feminist activists during the 1970s and 1980s, the tensions continued to abound between public and private roles, and the gap separating ideals of equal opportunity from the reality of economic discrimination widened. Women may have gained some new rights in the last two decades, but the feminization of poverty has also soared, with women constituting 70% of the adult poor. Moreover, a resurgence of conservatism, symbolized by the triumph of Phyllis Schlafly's anti-ERA coalition, has cast in doubt even some of the new rights of women, such as reproductive freedom. Chafe captures these complexities and contradictions with a lively combination of representative anecdotes and archival research, all backed up by statistical studies. As in The American Woman, Chafe once again examines "woman's place" throughout the 20th century, but now with a more nuanced and inclusive approach. There are insightful portraits of the continuities of women's political activism from the Progressive era through the New Deal; of the contradictory gains and losses of the World War II years; and of the various kinds of feminism that emerged out of the tumult of the 1960s. Not least, there are narratives of all the significant struggles in which women have engaged during these last ninety years--for child care, for abortion rights, and for a chance to have both a family and a career. The Paradox of Change is a wide-ranging history of 20th-century women, thoroughly researched and incisively argued. Anyone who wants to learn more about how women have shaped, and been shaped by, modern America will have to read this book.
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5.

The Equal Rights Amendment as Status Politics, in Social Forces » Read Now
by Wilbur J. Scott. 8 pgs.

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...The Equal Rights Amendment as Status Politics * WILBUR...explanation of orientation toward the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA) is assessed in this paper...explanation of...
6.

Faces of Feminism: An Activist's Reflections on the Women's Movement (Chap. 9 "Antifeminist Women on the Right: The Battle over the ERA") » Read Now
by Sheila Tobias. 336 pgs.

Collections: Entire Library

"Tobias objectively surveys the pitfalls & the triumphs along the way." Ms. "Were one teaching a course on American feminism from its origins in the nineteenth century to its contemporary travails, [this] would be the perfect text." San Francisco Review "An especially welcome resource for young...
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"Tobias objectively surveys the pitfalls & the triumphs along the way." Ms. "Were one teaching a course on American feminism from its origins in the nineteenth century to its contemporary travails, [this] would be the perfect text." San Francisco Review "An especially welcome resource for young women trying to make sense of the women's movement before becoming enmeshed in its battles." New York Times Book Review "An essential work for anyone who wants to learn, or learn more, about women's activism. An excellent, accessible work; highly recommended." Library Journal
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7.

Phyllis Schlafly's Battle against the ERA and Women in the Military, in Minerva: Quarterly Report on Women and the Military » Read Now
by David John Marley. 23 pgs.

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...woman who helped to kill the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA). However, since the...personal dragon called the Equal Rights Amendment. Like many members of the...together. The...
8.

The Women's Liberation Movement in America (Chap. 2 "Equal Rights, Now!" and Chap. 5 "Backlash, The Political Right's War against Equal Rights and Reproductive Freedom, 1972-1992") » Read Now
by Kathleen C. Berkeley, Randall M. Miller. 228 pgs.

Collections: History, Entire Library

The women's liberation movement of the 1960s and 1970s changed the lives of a vast majority of women, especially young women, in America. This introduction to the movement provides not only a narrative overview, but also a wealth of ready-reference materials, including 13 lengthy biographical...
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The women's liberation movement of the 1960s and 1970s changed the lives of a vast majority of women, especially young women, in America. This introduction to the movement provides not only a narrative overview, but also a wealth of ready-reference materials, including 13 lengthy biographical profiles of key figures, a broad selection of 15 primary source documents, a glossary of terms, and a useful annotated bibliography. The women's liberation movement was an outgrowth of earlier waves of feminism, including the women's suffrage movement that gained women the right to vote in 1920. In a succession of chronologically organized chapters, Berkeley tells the tumultuous story of the movement from its historical roots through the present.
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9.

Contemporary Questions Surrounding the Constitutional Amending Process (Chap. 1 "The Origins and History of the Constitutional Amending Process in America" and Chap. 2 "The Question of Justiciability-Which Branch of Government Should Have the Ultimate Say over Issues Involving the Amending Process?") » Read Now
by John R. Vile. 204 pgs.

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This study examines the contemporary questions surrounding the process by which the U.S. Constitution can be amended. Beginning with the description of the mechanism and history of the constitutional amending process in America, the work considers five major questions surrounding the amending...
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This study examines the contemporary questions surrounding the process by which the U.S. Constitution can be amended. Beginning with the description of the mechanism and history of the constitutional amending process in America, the work considers five major questions surrounding the amending process. The question of justiciability: whether the courts should have authority to settle amending issues or whether they are political questions beyond the court's purview. The question of standards: what standards of review should be used. The question of safety: whether this is cause to fear an Article V convention. The question of exclusivity: whether there are legal means of changing the Constitution short of Article V. And the question of limitations: whether there are any unstated constitutional limits on the amending process.
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10.

Women's Rights in the United States: A Documentary History (Document 85 "Proposed Equal Rights Amendment (1923)" begins on p. 235, Document 89 "Working Women Respond to the Equal Rights Amendment (1920-1940)" begins on p. 244, and Document 107 "The Equal Rights Amendment and Some Arguments Pro and Con (1972)" begins on p. 290) » Read Now
by Winston E. Langley, Vivian C. Fox. 366 pgs.

Collections: History, Entire Library

The passion, pain, victories, and disappointments of the struggle for women's social, political, legal, economic, and educational rights in America from colonial times through 1993 are dramatized in this comprehensive documentary history. A rich panoply of voices and viewpoints, from feminists of...
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The passion, pain, victories, and disappointments of the struggle for women's social, political, legal, economic, and educational rights in America from colonial times through 1993 are dramatized in this comprehensive documentary history. A rich panoply of voices and viewpoints, from feminists of diverse socioeconomic and ethnic backgrounds to opposition leaders, make this an important resource for research and student debate on landmark issues of social and political justice. Letters, personal narratives, policy statements, laws, court decisions, and even poetry are featured in the collection. Organized into five chronological periods, the 125 documents included here integrate the dynamics of the movement into the historical period in which they were written. Each period and each document is preceded by an explanatory introduction that puts it in historical context. The collection provides many documents not found elsewhere and shows that the struggle for women's rights is a process that is still continuing as we approach the 21st century.
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11.

Women's Periodicals in the United States: Social and Political Issues ("Equal Rights" begins on p. 73) » Read Now
by Kathleen L. Endres, Therese L. Lueck. 564 pgs.

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Women's periodicals have a long history of treating social, political, and economic issues. Through alphabetically arranged entries on individual publications, this reference traces the rich diversity of approaches that these periodicals have taken. Included are entries on more than 70 different...
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Women's periodicals have a long history of treating social, political, and economic issues. Through alphabetically arranged entries on individual publications, this reference traces the rich diversity of approaches that these periodicals have taken. Included are entries on more than 70 different periodicals published in the 19th and 20th centuries. Some are radical, some are reactionary, but most fall somewhere in between. Each entry provides a critical narrative history of the periodical, circulation figures, related publication information, and a selected bibliography. The volume closes with a chronology and a bibliography.
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12.

Reclaiming the Mainstream: Individualist Feminism Rediscovered (Chap. Seven "A Funny Thing Happened to Us on the Way to the ERA") » Read Now
by Joan Kennedy Taylor. 280 pgs.

Collections: Entire Library

At a time when some feminist critics are saying that the feminist movement has been too individualistic and too market oriented, Joan Kennedy Taylor contends that feminists should cherish and celebrate their tradition of individualism and equal rights. Reclaiming the Mainstream points out that the...
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At a time when some feminist critics are saying that the feminist movement has been too individualistic and too market oriented, Joan Kennedy Taylor contends that feminists should cherish and celebrate their tradition of individualism and equal rights. Reclaiming the Mainstream points out that the most enduring voices in the women's movement--the voices that each successive generation of feminists rediscovers with a shock of recognition--Mary Wollstonecraft, Margaret Fuller, John Stuart Mill, Charlotte Perkins Gilman--have spoken out against government privileges and special protection for women so that their individual differences might flourish. This book argues that modern feminism grew out of the nineteenth-century Woman Movement, which, like much late nineteenth-century thinking, became a battleground between individualist and collectivist ideas. When individualist ideals predominated in this movement--ideals of independence, social mobility, even sexual freedom--it gained wide adherence. But when the movement supported collectivist ideas of social reform, it became more marginal and sectarian. It was a focus on the individual woman's rights and happiness that reinvented feminist movements twice in our history, in the decades from 1910 to the New Deal, and then again in the late 1960s. The book examines this history, gives an overview of the contemporary scene, and analyzes the campaign to pass and ratify an equal rights amendment--and its failure. Reclaiming the Mainstream also discusses contemporary policy issues that affect women: affirmative action and comparable worth; rape, battering, sexual harassment, and incest; the many facets of sexual and reproductive choice; and theattempts to unify feminist and nonfeminist women against pornography or in support of social feminist issues. On all these topics, Taylor offers a new and surprising individualist feminist analysis that asks feminists to make
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