black, not latino, who also need the extra help, need to have women and their families able to make as much as the men make. men, if you are opposed to the equal rights amendment, raise your hand.you might want to leave at this point. [laughter] we have one. i wish you well. the young woman sitting beside him. we know what's going to happen tonight. [laughter] , what are you go ahead and jump into the opposition and how that was framed at a specific time, and that it really did take hold, and here we are today. dr. ciani: i think that the opposition was really adamant about the positive nature of what they saw as a patriarchal umbrella, and that women and children were protected by this

patriarchy. this is coming in a time in the 1960's and 1970's, when we don't have a lot of recognition and acknowledgment about domestic violence. we don't have a lot of acknowledgment and acceptance of criminal behaviors that are happening in the homes. we don't have an understanding of sexual assaults. still, a lot of secrets, that are held within family homes. so, the opposition to the e.r.a. is painting the house sold as a perfect place -- the household as a perfect place, as a place that is a positive haven. the opposition uses the word haven a lot to describe the homes.

and painted the pro-e.r.a. people as anti-people , so they said that people who were in favor of the eagle rights amendment were anti-family best equal rights amendment were anti-family, anti-children, anti-home, anti-marriage. they really used the rhetoric of this negativity that was perceived in the larger general , and that general rhetoric that was negative was attached to a particular group of people. the stereotypes of the feminist , ande 1960's was someone i'm smiling because we continue to hear this on the daily news , someone who is shrill,

someone who is bold, someone who doesn't take no for an answer. someone who doesn't like men, someone who is this, someone who is that. schlaflyke phyllis really pushed that negative message. if i can go to her words again, this is another good quote from her. she says it like nobody else can. [laughter] in 1972 -- arly on she says early on in 1972, "it is time to set it straight, the claim that american women are unfairly treated and downtrodden are -- is not true. the truth is that american women never had it so good. why should we lower ourselves to equal rights, one we already

have the status of special "rivilege? she argues that based on the judeo-christian heritage, based on that heterosexuality that i talked about at the beginning of and she uses christian tradition a lot. what is her phrase? it is such a good one. [laughter] is a christian age of chivalry. she is really masterful at rhetoric. that -- this is a little bit interesting for me to but shehead around -- says, "our judeo-christian civilization has developed a

line custom, that since women must they are the physical consequences of the sex act, men must be required to bear the other consequences and pay in other ways,. " but she's arguing because women are the bearer of children and go through children and childbirth and the labor of to work that men have for their wives. but it is based on the judeo-christian understanding of marriage, it is based on a world where birth control is still a very uncomfortable subject for people. aboutso was very adamant feminism, antiabortion movement -- and the abortion movement, so she used the antiabortion movement to her advantage, and talked about women involved with the e.r.a. as baby killers.

-- i would, very call bold and strident in her words, in her use of language, but she does it in a very calm tone. and the way she writes is also very calm. people didn't see her as angry. they saw her as illustrating the perfect wife. won her the e.r.a. in 1977. page: let me switch to you. wrote the original amendment, worked on it for the rest of her life, passed away in 1977. can you give us any thoughts on alice and what she was thinking as far as the opposition to the equal rights movement -- to the equal rights amendment, by the

time the 1960's and even early 1970's came around?what were her thoughts ? kris: we spent a moment ago about context, and that this amendment she had helped to write and authored in the early 1920's was very different from what she intended to happen, and different from what would indeed have been in the 1960's and 1970's. one of the things that is very interesting, i just got done reading a pamphlet produced by the national women's party in the 1970's, you can tell alice paul is a heavy influence. she talks about all the social fears. she says the opposition will play on social fears. she said things that would never have come up in the 1920's, that we are now talking about. that is a very powerful way to campaign, and play on social fears. her opinion in the 1920's was that, and i think at the end of her life as well, if you got the

federal amended for the equality, the social things would work themselves out. by the height of the e.r.a. and anti-e.r.a. movement, we had all of these social fears become predominant above the e.r.a. she is afraid of that. she is also -- this is interesting because here he is pro-e.r.a., but she is not sure how to deal with what she called the women's libbers. to the public and newspapers she you young women are going to take the mantle. behind closed doors she wants to separate her hardy from the women's liberation -- her party from the women's liberation movement, because she felt maybe they are too radical, and they have so many initiatives that they want to pursue, and i would get tied into the equal rights amendment. the opposition is already doing that, so she wants to separate it. this is a woman who is in her

and wed early 90's, consider her radical, but maybe she is not so radical, coming up to a head with these new women who were radical, according to her, and really talking about these social issues. i think she wanted to disassociate her and her amendment from in a way. she was happy that they took up the amendment, but i'm not sure if she knew how quite a feel as all these issues were coming up. she has arguments for each of the issues but, i don't know what is going through her had personally at some point. is fascinating, because alice paul formed the national women's party with other people and at that, point they were the young generation is.where the rabble-rousers, people who were radical themselves. older suffrage parties that were really thinking of these people as

picketing the white house, this is atrocious, they should not do this. it was alice and her contemporaries who were radical. -- i really like to take about alice's time and everything she had done politically, and how that eventually flipped, and alice and the rest of the national women's party were now the older looking at the younger generation saying, wow, those tactics are a little too radical it is a fascinating look. but when you only get when you have something like the equal rights amendment that has the long lifespan. we can trace it from generation to generation. and i think we face the same thing when we talk about civil rights. say,of the young people you old people. of course, they are not talking about me. [laughter] i'm chronologically advanced, but i'm not old. but i think young people forget

that when dr. martin luther king, and when others were working in the civil rights movement, they were young people, too. it's just that as you go along, you change what is most urgently important to you in. people in my age group, it is a matter of preserving what several -- someone else struggled to gain. many young people are trying to get new rights we never thought would be possible. page: it is fascinating. you are both history professors. maybe we could talk a little bit about what students today think about the civil rights movement -- the equal. one of the biggest misconceptions is that people are generally shocked, because they think the equal rights amendment is law, and we are living safely under the equal rights amendment, and that is indeed not the case. sometimes it is shocking for them to hear about it, but we always tell of that that.

the second thing, they are shocked about the fact it was written in the 1920's, not the 1960's. the 1960's to them is ancient times. [laughter] kyle, you were saying earlier about the age of the students. the new undergrad class is born in 1998. [laughter] it is 1998 this year. i started teaching in the 1980's. when i first went into the classroom, students knew that the e.r.a. did not die until 1982-ish. so you could talk about the e.r.a. very shortly after that, by the 1990's, you walked in the classroom and say something about e.r.a., it was like you

were talking about laundry detergent. [laughter] it was now a not in memory. it was something you had to teach as history, not current events, and not as a part of collective memory. i think they don't know much about it now. but i would like to say that in the last few years, students have much more readily -- coming into my classroom at least -- come into my classroom as feminists. they are shocked to learn anyone who would call themselves a feminist with someone they could relate to at all or was a halfway decent human being. are coming into the classroom identifying as feminist before they get there. it is a huge change. there's a lot of energy around feminism and women's issues. in the e.r.a. particularly,

but i would say it is the primary issue for women right now, there are plenty of other issues that are probably more important to more women immediately then passing the e.r.a.,things like raising the minimum wage , parental paid leave, and voter rights, those are more important than the e.r.a. right now is. i would not disagree with their priorities in that way, but it was a remarkable moment. i remember in the late 1980's and early 1990's, when it meant absolutely nothing, that kids had not heard of it. dr. williams: i think what happens today is many of the women's organizations pay more attention to young women, and we try to teach them about the thing that impacted their lives, and how they got to be where they are. now, myhat organization, the national congress of black women, all of us have young women who are interns who do real things, not just filing.

[laughter] they do research, write articles, they read. they have a better opportunity to know these things. dr. ciani: and being in the national archives, filing is important. [laughter] we want to keep filing. with dr.ld agree muncy, and that i think there is a change. you mentioned young women, and i will add to that, young men as well. think people in college classes now -- it is expensive to go to college. it is more expensive now than it was in the 1980's. if you are going, you are really investing in your education, and you want to be part of the

solution, for the most part. we see that a lot. i'm at illinois state. we see that on the college campus. we have a very diverse campus. we have a lot of students who are very engaged, and a wide range of activism. iny tend not to just be flame, which is our feminist organization, but they are also in pride, young republicans. that is an interesting domination. --ple who are in pride and an interesting combination. people who are in pride and young republicans. they are not pigeonholing themselves like we used to do to students, and they are really standing up. i'm very proud to be doing what i do, and working with students. but having said that, they are

incredibly naive to how the world works. and you should be, i suppose, at that age. that makesthe things me very uncomfortable about that statement is that i don't think it is their fault. i think we are not teaching them at the middle school and high school level history the way that we used to. i can also say that with some sort of authority, because we have a history education program . we are the best in the nation, we train the most teachers in the country. for us to difficult repair some of the damage of the endurance -- ignorance they are bringing to us. we have been talking about historical context here it i ask

my students, how far did you get in your u.s. history class? they know about world war ii. and you know what they know about world war ii? they kind of know what the holocaust is. they have never heard of japanese interment. and they know who rosie the riveter is, a cartoon character. what we are teaching in our high school and middle school's is not appropriate. it is not training them to really deal with the world. and they can vote. for me, it is critical. i want them to understand how to vote, how to make those decisions. dr. williams: i'm glad you mentioned high school and young men. young men play an important part

in how women are treated in this country and around the world. youngcome the help of men. i'm pleased as we go around campuses and high schools and colleges, we see young men are taking the lead in being supportive of the equal rights amendment, so i am proud of them and i think we need to encourage them. after all, many of them have sisters, they have a mother, someday they are going to have daughters. i would hope they would want equality of opportunity for their daughters and sisters. kris: i teach a gender studies course at my college, and every year i have more men joining the course. it is great. i wanted to point out that social media i think is, you may love it or hate it, but i think for students, is one of the things that connects them and makes them feel it hard of a like part of a

community. it makes them learn about the issues they. maynot be studying the issues, but they are connected to them . i think that helps in a way. it can hinder, but like my students say, i know about this issue from some kind of social media. i'm impressed by that, because they did not learned in school, and they do not let -- watch the news, but they can pick up information quickly. we are trying to score ways we can use that to spread the message of equal rights amendment and other legislation that would affect specifically women. page: we have a couple of minutes left before we would turn it over to audience questions. let me ask one closing question of the panelists. why do you think some or even many of the feminist activists today might not make the e.r.a. their top priority? we talked about that a little bit. maybe give to our three sentences about why you think they really don't.

i will start. i think what of the reasons is that there are so many issues that there that they have to be concerned about. in our community, for example, we place a lot of challenging situations just over this past year, when we had seen young black women being stopped for routine traffic stops, and wind up dead when she is in custody. she's not the only one. we have had several others to think about. we have not always heard the outcry from the larger community about that issue. ,whos friend was being slammed across the room -- a young girl whose friend was being slammed across the room, and she was charged just for speaking up and in texas., when the police officer took the young woman in a baiting suit and did a body slam with her. those are all things in our community we have to think about, and we don't always hear the outcry from the larger

community we have to think about that. and fair wages, what have you. you will see us on picket lines all over the place. my friend left on me, because i used to keep picket signs in the back of my car. [laughter] i believe in, i will ask, what are you picketing for? let me go to my car. [laughter] we have to be activists. we have to see other people's issues as the same issues we had.maybe not the same subject, but the point is we can get more people to support our issue when we support their issue. we are all human, they are all human issues. if we want to be for human rights, we have to speak up for all human beings. that is why i never hesitate. i have slept out in the park, in the snow with the latinos, with native americans, i have gone to london and every place, for

people who had a problem with british petroleum not paying poor people. i see every one of those issues as connected to me and i want to make a difference,. don't always have the money to i stand for it. i would encourage people to know that there is only something you can do to make a difference in the life of somebody else. it may be small, but it makes a difference. page: absolutely. i want to hear from the rest of the panelists, but i want to let everyone know there are microphones on either side, so you can start lining up. we can go down the line. dr. muncy: i think that there are a lot of issues, and i said this earlier, that are more important to more women immediately than the equal rights in and it would be raising the minimum wage would be really crucial.

. i think paid parental leave is crucial. i think restoring voting rights is crucial. it is crucial to women, families, and all of us. and the immediate payoff of those is more obvious than the equal rights amendment, which doesn't seem in any immediate sense, to be urgent. agree with myould colleagues here. , it is also add to that the military-industrial complex in which we live, and the immigration issues, that we are ignoringaling with or and issues that, touch us on a global basis. it is something that in the 1970's was sort of ignored. theof the things that

anti-e.r.a. people really emphasized with that if women had an e.r.a., women would have to go into the military. since passed that. women do participate in armed , in almost not exactly equal ways, but somewhat of an equal manner. but i think we are dealing with ptsd in ways we have to deal with those issues, in ways that people ignored them earlier. we have to deal with health care. we have to deal with medical attention. our infrastructure is failing. i sound so negative. [laughter] .ut there is so much going on we have so many needs right now. i'm not sure that the equal rights amendment is forefront in

people's minds. i work with 48 teenaged girls through the alice paul and two world advisory council. every one of those girls has no idea what the e.r.a. is, and that it never passed. for them, it is a brand-new concept, but as soon as they learn it they are excited and charged. forou want new activists the e.r.a., you have to tell them about it. [laughter] know, it ist ignorance, but not chosen ignorance. they get very little international relations as well. but when they learn about it, they are charged, they are passionate. i think that is perhaps the next message. haven't experienced a lot of discrimination yet, and that is the other half of the coin. but i don't want them to.

i want them to not have to experience it. but for them, it is just a matter of an educational experience. all very much. we have people who are queued up for questions. we can make it easy and we will start here and then go back and forth. women'swe discuss suffrage, we discussed the u.s. vis-a-vis other country -- countries. we have to discuss how other countries deal with the e.r.a.. i'm not sure if that is part of your purview, but how does the rest of the world think of equal rights. page: a great question. one of the things we can do is look at where did next?ade michael moore's next movie. there are some countries ahead of us on women's rights. and then on the other side with they are not, some of us have helped legally to write laws for other nations.

we don't always assume we are ahead of everyone else in the world. kris: there are a lot of countries ahead of us. my students say every year, we are going to move to sweden. they passed legislation, half of their government has to be women. they did that and the 1970's, i believe. now, they are seeing the effects of that, and the fruits of that labor. and they have child care, and health care, and all of these great things. i think all the things people like alice paul were originally fighting for. we are one of six nations that has not passed sida -- cedaw. the united states stands out in a strange way. we have not passed the convention on the elimination of discrimination against women. 126 other nations have and we are one of, six. dr. williams: and several other

nations have had women presidents already, and we have not. not yet. dr. ciani: one of the things at the museum, we work closely with the state department and other organizations that bring international groups through the museum. we bring them through, we tell them the story, give them a tour, and we said after for a few minutes, and let them ask. you have american women sitting here, ask us whatever you would like.we may not be the experts, but we can tell you from a personal level what we think. some of the questions we get are absolutely astounding we have had women from. 17 or 18 different countries come through in the last 18 months, and the women who come from muslim countries are often the most unyielding. they say, you don't have an equal rights amendment why are you running a museum,? you should be picketing. [laughter] and we will say, thank you.

we are lucky in america that we have the opportunity to preserve this story to make sure that our getents, and our children the background information and understand this, and we are lucky to have lots of other activists and, who are actively working on that. it is not necessarily the answer they wanted to hear, but it is the answer of what we do and how we try to make that balance here. let's go right over here. you can see by my cane, little older. some of these people, i'm glad to see young faces in the audience. when i first became the now ,resident in northern virginia my phone number, my home phone number was put in the phone directory -- talk about an ancient idea -- as northern

virginia now. i ended upst year with over 500 calls to my number by battered women and raped women. i had guys with shotguns on my front porch. sote willing to shoot me they could perpetrate further violence on their women. and while phyllis was portraying the home as a haven, i was dealing with the bleeding dollies -- bleeding bodies and other women. when this happened the only place, we would shelter women was in alexandria, and they would not take children. , thateally violated women would leave her children behind. we also started court watching because we found that judges in

the southern states, i can remember one woman coming in who was deaf as a result of the , and being beaten around the head. and a sitting judge said there, well, honey, do you deserve it? and the violence continued. the home still is not a haven. i think that we have to think about the court rights of core rights of survival. do women have the right to thrive? how do we come to a place where we have no violence and no discrimination? quaker belief -- that goal.paul had i think that desire to be equal, to have the glass ceiling finish

top -- vanish, i think women all along the way have seen that as something they wanted. , i think thatread was true. of course, alice paul grew up among friends i think that also makes a difference. . kris: and i think that goes to what dr. williams was saying that we all must be diligent,, with family and friends, and find ways to make our communities better. dr. williams: we also have vice president joe biden to think for act,iolence against women that is a good start. but all of us need to be more vigilant. if you look at five women on the stage, at least somebody in this group has been -- has had domestic violence, whether against a son, or daughter, or a spouse. we need to have more attention to this issue.i meet women all the time

that you would never think our abuse. dr. ciani: i think one of the paradoxes was that at a time when the e.r.a. was being failing was the time when women, activists like yourself were recognizing that the personal is political, and we are really starting to take on the issue in your own homes. you were not waiting for governmental intervention, but you were doing it yourself. i think history has shown us that across this age, domestic violence shelters were being established in many different the in the 1970's, and in 1980's. they didn't start at that time, but they really expanded during that time.

sources show us that back in the colonial era, there were women who were taking in other women. think the feminist movement of the 1960's and the 1970's really did a service to women who were not being heard in a public setting. think that is important. thank you for raising that. it is a very important issue. absolutely. let's go right over here. -- page: absolutely. let's go right over here. >> the eagle ryman -- equal don't knowdment, i if anybody said it already because i was a couple minutes but there are not all the issues you raise as prominent and important that could be dealt with under the equal rights amendment.

but as a lawyer, i would say if we had an equal rights amendment, it would be a powerful legal tool to deal with at least some of the issues raised. for example, fair pay. why do we push minimum wage? we push it for men and women, but in fact, many more women than men at -- are at that level. many more issues in the workplace talking about protective legislation said, we need to have bathroom breaks. that is still an issue today. pregnant women do not get bathroom breaks in many jobs, forth if hours, and so there were an equal. rights amendment i think it would be an equal -- a great tool for many of the issues we deal with. you mentioned the military. at least my recollection from the late 1970's and 1980's is in

addition to the home is a haven, and that major theme that phyllis talks about, two of the issues i recall mentioned again and again is that women would have to be drafted, and women would have to be in combat. the third thing was we would all have to use the same bathroom. which of course in my house, that is true. [laughter] at any rate, these issues don't go away. there'sin fact, comments on that, but it seems to me if there were -- really were a push for the it really could be seen as an important tool for women and for men, really. page: absolutely. kris: i think alice paul wrote

so many drafts of the e.r.a. the final one she actually changes in 1943 is the one we know today. she intentionally kept it fake -- vague. i think that idea they could be used from a lot of different angles in court. is the correct term strict scrutiny? and the court system. that was her goal.keeping it they intentionally was her goal. that was intended. agueeeping it v intentionally was her goal. >> i have to tell you a story about alice paul and finish -- phyllis shockley. she made a speech four years ago in berkeley, invited to talk about feminism versus conservatism. she finished her speech, walked around the podium, and fell off the stage and broke her hip. i always say alice paul was

there and push her, because she was tired of it. [laughter] and the second thing is that we e.r.a., if on the you don't know it, and virginia. we have passed it five times in the senate. we can't get it through the house. it is being worked on in illinois, nevada, florida, north carolina, and we are pushing very hard. five states said they rescinded, but the supreme court said there is no and bread is in the constitution to let you do that you have to start, -- no apparatus in the constitution to let you do that, you have to start all over again. i noticed in your picture, you have pictures of people who worked on this, and the lady that just spoke was one of the in washington dc to richmond. we having why aren't

a story about all these people to years ago, we had? people talking about the e.r.a., and one professor said, it is actually dead. it is amazing to me. we need to have a program to tell the stories in order to get these people to write their , --sm and talk about them to write their books and talk about them. dr. williams: just recently, there is a book, "equal means equal." there is also a documentary in town at the u.s. capitol. e.r.a. go online to the coalition and find out more details about it. some of us go around the country, i have been to wake forest university, and we do tell the stories. not enough yet, but we are working on it.

we will have a meeting tuesday with the coalition. i would bring it up. stories are very powerful when you can hear from someone. >> you are all at universities. regina has a history project. -- virginiamaking a has a history project. we have been making a list of women who are important to the e.r.a., and interviewing them, and we get the tapes to the smithsonian. you need to be doing that too with your graduate students. these women are dying before we can even get to them. we are doing that at illinois state. nothing is happening in state legislation in illinois. it is at a standstill. if you are hoping for the e.r.a. know,forward, i don't alice, work the magic. nothing is happening in the state of illinois. >> we need more women in the legislature. dr. ciani: i think a lot of universities have excellent oral

programs. those of us who do work with graduate students, and do have masters programs, we really push -- ihistory, and we push will talk about my institution -- but we do a lot with local histories. our former director of women and very active ins the e.r.a., and went toe to toe with phyllis in springfield. we had her stories, we had her collection. i think one of the things that is really important about public history and oral history especially is that you get these and you leaves, the smaller stories together, and you get the national picture. you, wetely agree with need the stories, and i think

they are happening. they really are. page: right over here. >> hello. as you mentioned briefly before about the draft, this is something i have become very interested in, especially since it is relevant right now. it was on discussion on the hill. maybe if you could talk more about that and where it fits in, especially today. it is something i have not really encountered in my research on the feminist movement today as well. kris: i know alice paul and the in thel women's party 1970's, women's organizations had gotten together to talk about it. i think the consensus at that point was that women should be eligible for the draft, and legally, both men and women could be called for a draft at any point. alice paul personally felt that with a volunteer army, which

would star in the 1970's, that there would not be a need for the draft anymore. she is kind of right, right now. knock on wood. she said, by the way, women have always been in the army. they have always been there. not necessarily recognized for it. i'm not sure how she would feel about what is going on today, but at the core of it, she would say women should be drafted, not that she would want them to be drafted, but legally she would see it if you want true equality,, this is one of the products of equality. dr. muncy: maybe somebody here knows what's going on with this. , that itittle blurb would require that 18-year-old women would register.

help us. [indiscernible] to prevent it. right. page: dr. williams, do you encounter this when you are speaking? i think the: audiences to which i speak are often already ready for the equal rights amendment. i don't find any opposition at all. they are just hungry for more information so they know how to explain the in, -- equal rights amendment to their friends and families. i one woman in north carolina recently who raised the question about her husband objecting to her coming out to the meeting that we were having, and she wanted to know what was the solution to that. man,s obviously an older or a chronologically advanced man. [laughter] he was in his 80's. he objected. she asked, what did we think she

could do? i suggested she get a divorce. [laughter] and she came up to us afterwards and said, i'm thinking of doing just that. [laughter] dr. ciani: just to talk about the draft a little bit, i think one of the things that is a common thread, through from the 1920's to the present, is that there are a lot of men and women, but women especially, who activists. , womentrike for peace i.iking around world war there are so many organizations engaged in the activism of peace. global peace, local peace. i think that the draft is something that would be very

, both men and women and transgender people. don'tk all people -- i know that we would be able to get a draft through in this climate, but i don't know that they thought they would get a draft through before either. you mentioned social media. i think there are so many different immediate ways to find out about activism, that i don't know that a draft would fly. i really don't. maybe i'm an optimist. i'm a peace activist, so that is my bias. butn't believe in a draft, i'm a peace activist.

kris: and if i could add, if more women were involved in government, they would help the peace movement. dr. ciani: if you -- page: if you stay around for a little that, there are organizations that could help you. if you can stay for a little bit. --i am the newly injected inducted virginia now president. i would like to share when i saw , a bracelet that i'm brought under the wings of the current president to talk about the e.r.a. again, i thought it was laundry detergent. i had no idea. thinking, i'm smart, went to college, but what is impacting me as a woman, raising kids, having children of color? all these things, all these sectional pieces.

i will jump to the presidential campaign that i'm seeing now. as i was educating myself about , to the lawyer that ind it is a broad statement that passing it can help, but it has so much deeper meaning than the few sentences. i'm watching the presidential some of thed challenge ahead without screaming at my tv, was seeing some of the young women talk they wouldandidate support, that would not vote for a woman because she is a woman. i understand what they are trying to say, that gender should not be an issue, but at the same time i think they are cutting off the issue of what the e.r.a. would speak to. not be women we would capable of serving, or raking the glass ceiling, or eating represented in the community or -- being represented in the

community are being seen as leaders. womanould you say to the who would say i'm not voting for a woman, or standing with women, just because of their gender? i know it is not intended for is a tendency, it to lean towards not discriminating that is where the line blurs. . are two sides said the coin. youe paul would say, shouldn't vote for the candidate because they are a woman, you should vote because of their qualifications. however, you need more women at the table in order to address issues that do affect women, specifically. it is a double-sided coin. i think that it would be great when we get to a point where we are choosing candidates for a

quality -- for their qualities, and not for their gender, but i do hope we can elect more women into legislative positions for the sake of helping women, but also just addressing issues that are going to affect women and men as well. maybe the conversation could start younger, putting gender studies in high school. we need to vote for people whose policies we support, whether they are men or women. were runninghlafly for president, we would not say we should all vote for her because she is a woman, because she doesn't support policies we think would be best for women. those young women who say i'm not going to vote for somebody just because she is a woman. same, choices were the

and you had a choice between a man and a woman, i would say go for the women, because we need more progressive, feminist women in positions of power. but i agree that policy comes first, and that if you think the policies are going to help more women, those for the candidate, not for a woman. dr. williams: i can also say that 44 times we selected a man for president, isn't it time that we show our daughters that they are smart, they are wonderful, they can do things, and just this one time we can have a woman? i don't see that always the argument is that the woman is not as smart. as a matter of fact right now, there is a very smart woman running for president. i would have no problem saying i'm voting for her because she has a woman, and wonderful and smart and will do a great job and i know she supports, what i support. i would be very emphatic with

our daughters and our sons, because they need to know young women can be just as smart. we have had women around the world already shown how smart they were and how good they were for their countries. it is time for us to do that. if you previously didn't believe women could do anything, but if we continue for number 45, 46, and 47 to say no woman is smart enough, something is wrong with that picture. page: absolutely. we have two minutes left. >> just a clarification because we started talking about the draft. right now, we don't have a draft, but still young men have to sign up when they are 18. what passed in the senate today was that young women when they turn 18 also have to sign up. an alternative would be to not have anybody sign up. some people might prefer that. at any rate, i don't know what

is going to happen in the house, but the idea was that if young men sign up, young women should sign up as well. we will see where that goes. i just wanted to clarify. page: thank you. we had just enough time for any very last minute comments you would like to make. was there anything you wanted to say but did not get to say, or that we skipped over quickly? dr. ciani: i would like to say, i'm delighted to see so many people here. i wondered if anybody would come out to talk about the laundry detergent. dr. muncy: i think it is great. thank you so much for coming. dr. williams: i would also say, particularly to minority women, that we need to support equal rights amendment, just as the civil rights movement helped women of all races, all colors, all creeds, so can the equal rights amendment help not only women but men.

in terms of education, i would ask all of us to encourage your school systems to expand the educational offerings at the middle school and high school level. he suggested high school. i think we need to -- you suggested high school. i think we need to go younger than that. i think we need to go into middle school. i tried to do that at the last school and they said, we don't have time, we have to do science and math. we have been focusing on stem for so long. we needwonderful, but to refocus on humanities. that is my pitch. kris: i want to mention also, we need to have these conversations. it has been such a taboo subject, anything about women's

rights. we are not talking about one half of a country, because we are so afraid of bringing up abortion. but we need to have these discussions. we need to know, why do we support the e.r.a., or why rb against it? which -- withions your friends, and your students, your children and parents, and let's not shy away from the topic. it's a good one. page: and we obviously need to have more conversations. hopefully this is the beginning of a series of conversations, and maybe we will be inviting back -- invited back home and we will keep talking another day. [applause]

[captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2016] [captioning performed by the national captioning institute, which is responsible for its caption content and accuracy. visit ncicap.org] contenders, on the presenting key figures who have run for president and lost but changed, read it as political history. each night, we address a different candidate beginning with henry clay and ending with prospero. at eight p.m. eastern time 14th, hererough the on american history tv, only on c-span3. >> this sunday night, journalist and author joshua kendall "first data: book, parenting and politics, parenting an"

fathering is a way into character, and we tend to think this is a bad guy or a good guy, but to see a lot of these men who have been president had different parts, they were compartmentalized. some of them could be very laudable could do amazing things, and some of them could do, things that horrify us. >> sunday night, on c-span's q and a. >> the c-span buses in philadelphia, pennsylvania this week, to ask people about the democratic convention, and the issues most important to them and the 2016 presidential campaign. good morning. ima superdelegate for hillary clinton from the great city of ohio.itd, state of gives me the pleasure and honor to be part of this historic moment. 2008rst convention was in, and i had the opportunity to be nominating the first african-american president.

i'm looking forward to doing it again to nominate the first female president of the united. i'm excited about this opportunity. go ohio, though hillary. fromllo, i am a delegate the san fernando valley in los angeles and i am supporting, hillary. i could not be more excited to support the first female candidate for president. i really care about women's issues and middle east politics, and i know she is the most qualified candidate for president. i could not be more excited. >> my name is ryan and i am here at the ohio delegation for the dnc. the presidential election has consequences for the last -- the next four years, but i'm >> i'm a district delegate from fresno california. my delegate experience has