Mrs America and the Equal Rights Amendment

I remember the first time I learnt that the US had failed to pass the Equal Rights Amendment. The amendment, an addition to the constitution that would guarantee parity between the sexes and remove legal differences between men and women in employment, property ownership and divorce, wasn’t news when I learnt it. It was in an A-Level politics lesson, but I was still shocked.

The amendment was first raised in 1923 but had its heyday in the 1970s. It passed through Congress and the Senate and had wide bipartisan support. It looked like a done deal, but it never made it to become a part of the US constitution: it failed to be ratified in the necessary two-thirds of state legislatures.

Women’s rights are supported through other means in the US; court decisions such as the Equal Pay Act (1963), Title VII of the Civil Rights Act, and potentially the fourteenth amendment all legislate against sex discrimination. But, the failure to pass an act which enshrines sex equality is quite galling. As a symbol, and one I learnt about in the wake of Trump’s election, its defeat entrenched the opinion that America’s rule-makers were misogynistic men.

It came as a great surprise, while watching Mrs America on BBC Two, to learn that the ERA hadn’t been defeated by the men-in-grey-suits of my nightmares. The amendment’s adversaries in the 1970s were women: housewives from across the US, led by the Phillis Schlafly. Indeed, opposition to the ERA had been led by women since its inception at the beginning of the 20th century.

In the early days, many working-class women pointed out that erasing protective working legislation that allowed shorter working hours to enable childcare would do more to harm women’s equality in the workplace than help it. In the 1970s, the anti-ERA women argued along the same lines: equality which denied women special provision would endanger, not help women. Schlafly envisaged women conscripted to fight, housewives not allowed to stay at home and gender-neutral bathrooms, the prospect of which still causes debate today. She was a compelling speaker, watching her debate Betty Friedan, author of The Feminine Mystique, you can see why women alienated by second-wave feminism felt safer with her defence of homemakers.

Mrs America is a perfect evocation of 1970s America in all its political and social hope and fragility. The soundtrack starts with Walter Murphy’s “A Fifth of Beethoven” and only gets better from there. Rose Byrne shines as Gloria Steinem; she is a complex, inspiring, continually flawed figure beyond the feminist poster-girl. Steinem is subject to virulent misogynistic attacks, as indeed are all the women depicted. This is not a hammed-up catfight between good and evil, but an exploration of the brilliance and limits of the 1970s movement. One of the most poignant moments is when Shirley Chisholm (played by Uzo Aduba) realises that many of the feminists she has been working with do not truly believe that she, a black woman, can be the democratic nominee for President.

Since the election of Donald Trump, the focus on the ERA has intensified: ratification deadlines are long expired, but Nevada, Illinois, and Virginia have recently passed the amendment. This brings the number of states up to thirty-eight, but five voted to revoke their ratifications in the late 70s. While the fate of the ERA is still unclear, we are still  yet to have a female leader of the US, and our current rhetoric and politics would be perhaps disappointing to many second-wave feminists.

Mrs America still makes compelling watching. We have not moved as far beyond the debates and inadequacies of 1970s politics as we might like to believe.