Why We Lost the ERA/Why ERA Failed
Mansbridge, Jane J. & Berry, Mary Frances
an associate professor of political might expect from Berry—its history of science and sociology at Northwestern the ratification process is useful—but University, writes that polls largely...
...While feminists intended to raise new and presumably better protections in place of the old, these were not strictly mandated by the ERA...
...Three years later in for Phyllis Schlafly's early and effecNothing shocking in that, right...
...Howard University, Even Phyllis Schlafly, the leader of is well known as a liberal noisemaker the anti-amendment forces, gets rep rior to last November's election, ERA's in New York and New Jersey...
...spectful treatment from Mansbridge...
...To her credit, Mansbridge knocks down this canard...
...showed that a majority favored state wasn't really that popular...
...I'm pated and that many of them would WHY ERA FAILED: POLITICS, WOMEN'S RIGHTS, waiting for a critical word about some have opposed," she says...
...Berry raises the possibility that the insurance industry, worried about being barred from issuing policies that are actuarily sound but make gender distinctions, was the moving force behind the effort to kill the ERA...
...Small wonder homemakers haven't lined up behind Smeal to support it...
...In Maine in 1984, sup- women and weakening the family...
...And they've was no national referendum, but it's out Schlafly's intervention, the consenbeen lying for years...
...If 'equal K nocking down the myth of the protection' could mean busing white ERA's overwhelming popularity children to black neighborhoods, if is only one of the brave tasks that 'due process' could bar punishing peoMansbridge takes on in Why We Lost ple who everyone agreed had commit-the ERA...
...You'll never hear Eleanor Smeal VIansbridge says she found "no evi- say that...
...Conservatives didn't have to be Mary Frances Berry/Indiana University Press/$17.95 that some readers may pass up her male chauvinist ogres or housewives of book to read Mary Frances Berry's on the Marabel Morgan school to want to Fred Barnes the same subject...
...count of why the ERA went by the Americans like the idea of equal rights...
...Women can never hold half the economically and politically powerful positions in the country if a greater proportion of women than men withdraw from competition from these positions...
...Feminists were poised to percent in a poll taken one month tion to the Amendment's effects, they stage their first big celebration since before the election...
...nlike the ordinary run of feminists, Mansbridge insists that homemakers weren't merely fantasizing when they concluded that both the ERA and the women's movement were not out to aid them...
...It AND THE AMENDING PROCESS OF THE Kennedy...
...The strategy of the acterizes as a distinction between amendment's advocates was to talk public opinion and popular sentiment...
...Feminists, from the time the women's movement began twenty years ago, have opposed homemaking as a full-time-career...
...When the enough...
...It took one phone call for THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR FEBRUARY 1987 39 Mansbridge to reach her...
...The amendment If you're following the drift, the next (1,(1'41414100/41' a central issue in the debate...
...What happened in Ver- gerations, while incurring some costs named Geraldine Ferraro as his Demo- mont, then, should have been no sur- in credibility, succeeded in making the cratic vice presidential running mate...
...Mansbridge notes that Smeal was simply "much more inaccessible to the average member than Phyllis Schlafly was...
...Because of the ERA's close tie to the women's movement, homemakers were automatically skeptical of it, the author says...
...On election day, it failed by have, such as requiring combat duty by socialist is the mayor of the state's 55 to 45 percent...
...Schlafly shrewdly than its Republican tradition would by two-to-one...
...Ver- Florida, polls showed an equal rights tive effort to organize potential oppomont is a state that's a lot more liberal amendment would win voter approval nents," she writes...
...measure the support for an abstraction Mansbridge offers a fair and subtle ac-called "equal rights for women...
...Furthermore, they stood to suffer tangible loss...
...ly want to change women's role in this Mansbridge denigrates neither the country...
...by the states, the average poll result opponents had only to create enough There's an old lesson, freshly told, in showed it was backed 57 to 32 percent, doubt about the Amendment to prethe Vermont result: polls about equal seemingly a rock solid majority...
...on the U.S...
...They had suffered, partly because of the women's movement, "status degradation...
...It was part of a trend...
...It lost two-to-one...
...to the Constitution...
...When Arthur sequences that legislators who J. Mansbridge/University of Chicago Press/$9.95 paper supJane Schlesinger, Jr...
...The answer is no...
...And the ERA would reinforce that...
...She found Schlafly to be very New Republic...
...polls showed that a state equal But 57 percent voted against an amend- Why ERA Failed is better than you "The Amendment would have been rights amendment was all but certain merit in New York and 51 percent voted ratified by 1975 or 1976 had it not been to be ratified by the voters of Vermont...
...prise at all...
...Jane Mansbridge, accessible...
...finds fault with Presi- ported the Amendment had not antici- dent Reagan, that's no big deal...
...square...
...In 1975, polls now safe to say that the amendment • sus would have formed...
...Anyway, Mansbridge passes seemed, then, that the ERA would give CONSTITUTION the test...
...Liberal Democrats 1980 in Iowa, a pre-election poll found equal rights to one centered on the routinely win there nowadays (gover- that a state ERA was favored by 48 to p ipractical effects the amendment might nor, senator), and a self-described 23 percent...
...Withrights amendments lie...
...grounded reasons, Mansbridge writes, opponents were leery of leaving the issue in the hands of judges...
...boards, without the hysterical conserBut the state referenda have measured vative-bashing that marks most femisomething further—whether voters tru- nist screeds on the matter...
...In a crunch, sentiment is would mean in real life...
...Maybe there were reasons for that, but I always found inaccessibility to be an unattractive trait...
...The test to be a certifiable paranoid to suppose for me of a political writer is the will- that guaranteeing men and women ingness to make tough, critical judg- 'equality of rights under the law' might ments about a politician or an issue turn out also to have substantive conWHY WE LOST THE ERA that the writer supports...
...And this Mansbridge tosses out an interesting helps explain why the ERA failed to vignette that certainly matches my exFred Barnes is a senior editor of the become the twenty-seventh amendment perience...
...State legislators voted against the ERA "not because of massive organized lobbying by the insurance industry or large corporate contributions to their campaigns but because the cumulative impact of many influences, including district-based 40 )rganizing by [Schlafly's] STOP ERA, dence of a conscious insurance in-lad led them to believe that voting for dustry conspiracy to stop the ERA...
...Because the amendment gave conservatives practically nothing national ERA was up for ratification process requires a near consensus, the to cheer about...
...It is an extraordinarily honest ted serious crimes, and if the `penumand insightful book, all the more so bra' of the Bill of Rights gave women because Mansbridge is a feminist and a right to abortions, one did not have a fervent backer of the ERA...
...The amendment, after all, was a product of the movement, and the movement "was profoundly opposed to traditional conceptions of how families should be organized," she says...
...She likes the ERA, but that the Court another set of words to work doesn't bias her analysis...
...In moved the argument from one over )i1111110: lead you to believe...
...But it turned out were already well on their way to winWalter Mondale knuckled under to the that 63 percent voted against the ning," Mansbridge says...
...THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR FEBRUARY 1987...
...le Amendment would cause them Imagine that: the ERA lost fair and more trouble than it was worth...
...Finally, women who stayed home with the kids had begun to feel declasse...
...Their exagNational Organization for Women and amendment...
...I'm only sorry with...
...So does Mansbridge, I suspect...
...an associate professor of political might expect from Berry—its history of science and sociology at Northwestern the ratification process is useful—but University, writes that polls largely Mansbridge's book is far superior...
...For wellwhat prevails...
...Sentiment is what people let the Supreme Court decide what it really feel...
...The very existence of full-time homemakers was incompatible with many goals of the women's movement, like the equal sharing of political and economic power," Mansbridge writes...
...There vent a consensus from forming...
...That was lost, in an election year that otherwise step shouldn't be too hard...
...largest city, the People's Republic of port for a state ERA was pegged at 62"Once opponents turned public attenBurlington...
...Indeed, this created a "genuine conflict of interest" between feminists and homemakers, one that the ERA exacerbated...
...history and law at...
...substantive effects of the Amendment Surprise, surprise...
...Civil Rights Commission...
...Berry, a professor of avoid that...
...But "when I tried to reach [NOW President Eleanor] Smeal, it took months...
...You have arguments nor the motives of oppohere what historian John Lukacs char- nents of the ERA...
...highmindedly about equal rights, push Public opinion is the formal, high- the amendment through 38 states, and toned stuff...
...It would deprive them of "some traditional protections and benefits," Mansbridge says...
...no in New Jersey...
...I can't argue with that...
Vol. 20 • February 1987 • No. 2
