What Price Women's "Equality"?
Wolfgang, Myra
PATRICIA SEXTON'S CLAIM in the February 1971 DISSENT article "Women Debate the Equal Rights Amendment" that "the vulnerable woman down at the bottom of the job ladder" will in the long run...
...Mrs...
...Equally little concern has been shown by the proponents of the Equal Rights Amendment about other of its implications...
...It is doubtful that a woman was ever denied a full professorship because of state protective legislation, while a good many have probably been denied one on the centuries-old, if unspoken, assumption that "women just can't think like men...
...But since when are rest periods and separate washrooms mere niceties...
...It applies only to women...
...Unfortunately, the only way to go is not up...
...Nor, unless we are foolish enough to imagine we can restructure in one broad sweep our entire society, will it alter the traditional role of woman, not only as the bearer of children, but also as the one primarily responsible for their care, their growth, and development...
...Most sex discrimination is a matter of private practice, not of public law, and will not be effeeted by the Amendment...
...The majority of the laws dealt with family support...
...Witness what happened when Michigan's 54houra-week law for women was temporarily suspended in the late fall and winter of 1967 68: one automobile manufacturer immediately initiated excessive overtime for women—a 69hour week—which resulted in some women literally dropping from exhaustion and having to be carried out on stretchers...
...Certainly, the chief conflict between those who support the Equal Rights Amendment and those who oppose it is not whether women should be discriminated against, but what constitutes discrimination...
...Which will it be...
...What is more, we should not ignore the safeguards for equal treatment under law now given all persons under the 14th Amendment...
...and attitudes—predispositions to act or react in certain ways—are intangible, insidious, and extremely hard to change...
...When a proposal leaves the mind so un satisfied regarding its effect on ordinary, obvious, recurring relationships, a more specific and con crete approach is clearly called for...
...What will the effect be upon thousands of California women if their state minimum wage law is repealed...
...We who want equal opportunity and equal pay for equal work and equal status for women know that frequently we obtain real equality through a difference of treatment, rather than an identity of treatment---or, as it often turns out, an identity of mistreatment...
...Small wonder that the farm lobby, the Manufacturers' Association, the Republican Women's clubs, and the Business and Professional Women support the Equal Rights Amendment...
...To be sure, this is nonsense—but it is equally nonsensical to claim the Amendment would change it or the discrimination...
...To help remove them, "specific bills for specific ills" are needed...
...As Paul Freund of the Harvard Law School has pointed out, The truth is that a motto of four words—"The Equal Rights Amendment"—however noble in purpose, is hopelessly inept to resolve all the diverse issues of classification by sex in the laws...
...It is legislation and not any notable improvement in employer morality that gives us better working conditions today than we had a century ago...
...Is it just a nicety not to require a woman to ruin her health lifting heavy objects, or to be granted a maternity leave...
...Department of Labor, has stated, The inequality of women does not arise out of constitutional defect—but rather out of eco nomic, social, political and legislative default...
...It's not going to make the maid a manager, or the instructor a professor --either overnight or "in the long run...
...It is firmly rooted in attitude...
...Women's proneness to accident increases and their efficiency drops very substantially after long hours of work, when compared to men doing the same job...
...Profit is still the name of the game—just as it was in the heyday of laissez-faire...
...Just try telling a woman obliged to work a 60-or even a 70-hour week, as well as meet her family responsibilities, that the Equal Rights Amendment should boost her "morale, aspiration, and fighting spirit...
...It will also be disastrous for the farm worker, since the state minimum wage exceeds the federal minimum wage...
...Such discrimination, we all know, is deplorably pervasive...
...Which will it be...
...From another point of view, only young men are given the privilege or benefit of disaffirming an obligation between 18 and 20, therefore, the age should be raised uniformly to 20...
...Far more likely, a good many women would be forced off the job ladder altogether, preferring the purgatory of existence on ADC to the hell of backbreaking, home-wrecking compulsory overtime—overtime they could be required to work if state protective legislation is abolished...
...In many states, there are different laws governing ages to contract marriage, 18 for females, 20 for males...
...Yet banks have been notorious for sex discrimination...
...The middle-class supporters of the Amendment make the mistake of thinking that sweatshops belong to the past...
...It exists not only in our universities, but in virtually every field of endeavor...
...Our challenge is of working for new and better laws where necessary, the improvement and modification of old laws, and effective en forcement of the good ones now on the books...
...This took place not at the turn of the century, but in 1968 and should give us a glimpse of the havoc that would be created if existing state protective legislation was swept off the books...
...From one point of view, only young women are given the benefit or privilege of contracting between 18 and 20, (continued on page 320) 266 WHAT PRICE WOMEN'S "EQUALITY...
...While all overtime should be optional for both men and women, it is absolutely mandatory that overtime for women be regulated because of this double role...
...Laws limiting hours for women were enacted originally to provide them with a shield against obligatory overtime so that they could carry on their life at home as wives and mothers, fulfilling a double role in society...
...It must be borne in mind that the majority of American women who are mothers of young children elect to remain at home and out of the work force...
...The pie in the sky so generously proffered by the advocates of the Equal Rights Amendment must seem like a cruel joke to women who have no hope of reaching it...
...The Equal Rights Amendment creates no positive law in itself to combat discrimination in private employment...
...This being the case, "sameness" of treatment will never result in true equality...
...A meat-packing company began requiring its women employees to work a 70-hour week in a refrigerated room where temperatures ranged from 32 to 40 degrees...
...Does Mrs...
...Labor standards legislation also protects working women in other ways...
...Sexton has also failed to consider the impact of the Equal Rights Amendment in the field of domestic relations, marital duties, and parental responsibilities...
...Banker's hours" has become a cliche, and certainly the work in banks demands no outstanding physical prowess...
...PATRICIA SEXTON'S CLAIM in the February 1971 DISSENT article "Women Debate the Equal Rights Amendment" that "the vulnerable woman down at the bottom of the job ladder" will in the long run be pulled up by the Equal Rights Amendment is outrageously optimistic...
...Furthermore, according to New York University's Dr...
...Their right to that choice must be respected...
...The middle-class women who push for the passage of the Equal Rights Amendment will, at best, be "liberating" only themselves--at the price of adding to the exploitation of the 64 percent of the female working force who hold low-paying or menial jobs and who desperately need what protection they now have...
...If this be the case, women are damned from birth...
...No Equal Rights Amendment will alter one whit the basic biological differences between men and women...
...McCall's Magazine recently compiled and published a list of state laws which they contended discriminated against women...
...Every state now makes a husband liable for the support of his wife and children...
...The Equal Rights Amendment doesn't require the promotion of women to better or "decision-making" jobs...
...continued from page 266) therefore, the age should be lowered uniformly to 18...
...Sexton refers to the guarantee of "some amenities...
...Obviously, the reasons for this discrimination will not be discovered simply by pouring over law books, nor will the situation be eliminated by destroying existing state protective legislation...
...JUST VdI-IAT, THEN, IS INVOLVED in the concept and practices of true "Equal Rights...
...The Equal Rights Amendment would make possible their abolition...
...Of course not...
...To achieve "equality" in our social security laws, will women have to wait until 65 to retire, and will men be permitted to retire at 62...
...This is not the case...
...Erwin Tichauer, America's foremost biomechanical engineer, and according to the British Industry Studies, men are better able to work overtime than women...
...Sexto.n, too, suggest that a familysupport law is a curtailment of women's rights...
...These protections are absolute necessities if women are to survive—let alone thrive—in our labor force...
...Mrs...
...Sexton's rose-colored spectacles are not admitting the light of common sense when she suggests that the Equal Rights Amendment will dislodge the male hierarchy of academia...
...As Mary D. Keyserling, former director of the Women's Bureau, U.S...
...Many legal discriminations against women do exist...
...As some feminists seem to have it, any difference is a discrimination...
Vol. 18 • June 1971 • No. 3
