american history tv, saturdays on c-span2, exploring the people and events that tell the american story. at 2:00 p.m. eastern on the presidency, peggy noonan, former speech writer for ronald reagan commemorates the former president's birthday in simi valley, california. then at 7:00 p.m. eastern on conversations with historians we bring you part one of a six hour conversation with historian and author douglas brinkley. talks about his education working at used book and record stores, and music figures muddy waters and little richard. exploring the american story, watch american history tv, saturday on c-span2. and find a full schedule on your program guide, or watch any time on line at c-span.org/history. good evening, everybody.

i'm betsy fischer martin, the executive director of the women in politics ips institute at american university. and welcome to our virtual series, women on wednesdays. we are glad that you could join us. for those of you that are new to our events, wpi is a non-profit and non-partisan institute in public affairs that same to close the gender gap in political leadership. we offer act democratic and practical spain training and we facilitate reference and discussions like this on women in politics. so tonight we want to take a look back, all the way back, a hundred years to the era right after the ratification and passage of the 19th amendment. because, understandably, the fight for women's equality did not stop with the six acts of the suffrage movement. there was more to do. that's what our discussion will

center on this evening with dr. dewolf who has just written an amazing new book. it is entitled gender citizenship, the original conflict over the equal rights amendment 1920 to 1963. and dr. dewolf is a historian who earned her ph.d. here at american university. and we are proud she is also a wti course instructor this semester teaching a class on this very subject. i am sure we have a few of her students joining us this evening. i want to let everybody know before we start that we are going to save plenty of time for your questions. at the bottom of the screen, you will see an ask a question button. don't be shy. feel free to type your question in there. you can also upload other people's questions that you may be interested in. if you missed any of the discussion tonight and you want to share it with friends, the replay will be available at the

same ink that you used to register. rebecca, welcome, thanks for being here. >> very excited to be here. thank you for having me. >> of course. so, we have -- we have a lot to cover. i mean, this book is amazing. first of all, i will just say that what i really enjoyed about the book is that it's sort of a two fer. you have an academic component, obviously, with lots of footnotes, references and sources. but it also reads really really well and it's just super interesting to read. so it is i think for two audiences. anyway, i would recommend anybody who is interested in the subject to grab a copy of rebecca's book. you can cici the green link on the screen. and there is even a special discount code in the chat if you want to buy it. but let me start, rebecca, with two kind of scenes setters, the first being set on you, the

second scene for you as a student of history really decided to study this particular time period in the history of the e.r.a. i will note that if you are joining us tonight you are thinking wasn't the fight in the '70s with phyllis chaply, gloria steinem? you are probably not alone in that thought. tell us why this moment in history is particularly important. >> that's a really great question. i am going to start off with how i became interested in the e.r.a., again with a lint of foundation. background. this book is based off of my ph.d. dissertation research. i first came to the e.r.a., my first year of my ph.d. program. so 2008-2009. and i will just say, as an aside, things at the e.r.a. in

2008-2009 were much different back then than they are today. there is more support and more knowledge about it. in this earlier time there was a lack of knowledge about the e.r.a. i came to the topic because my ph.d. adviser at the time, alan lickman, asked me to give a lecture on the e.r.a. period class that i was test his teaching assistant for. so i got into the research at that point. i thought, okay, this is an interesting topic. what really got me going, after i gave the lecture i opened it up to the class for discussion and some of the students said something along the lines they had no idea that the e.r.a. wasn't ratified. a considerable amount of students said something along the lines yeah, we recognize there is persistent sex discrimination against women but we don't see the e.r.a. as solution to that problem. that set off a lightning bolt of

curiosity for me. why hadn't the recognition of sex discrimination resulted in a more robust push for the e.r.a.? i wanted to solve the disconnect between realizing there are still problems holding women back and not thinking that the e.r.a. is a solution to that problem. around the time i should also say that i had to read a book for a graduate course called -- it is susan douglas's work, where the girls are. a great work on the history of history of media's portrayal of women. she has a great and insightful discussion of the e.r.a. in the 1970s representing the classic cat fight imagery of how the women are portrayed in the media. it depicts women as fighting one another. overly emotional, can't get along, and implicit from this imagery is women aren't fit for leadership positions.

that strongly approached how i approach the e.r.a. i wanted to get away from the cat fight history. i wanted to know if the e.r.a. struggle may have represented a strugen between more than two groups of women. at first i was interested in all parts of the e.r.a., i was writing all of my graduate papers on it and becoming obsessive about it. but i became drawn to the earlier years because very little is written about it and it seemed like a mysterious part of the e.r.a. history. because other dividing lines don't play out the same way as the original e.r.a. conflict. what i mean is you have conservatives and liberals on both sides of the issue, men and women on both sides of the issue, feminists on both sides of the issue. it is not an easy conflict to figure out where the dividing lines of the conflict were because you were seeing overlaps everywhere. i wanted to big your out what was going on why does it call

into question so many questions about trends in history. individuals that we typically cheer as champions of human rights, eleanor roosevelt, she opposed the e.r.a. and people like frances perkins, the first woman secretary of labor, and she's typically cast as a hero of women's history. she also opposed the e.r.a. that begs the question, what's rg going on, what is motivating people to be opposed to it or support it. i wanted to figure out what the dividing line was. >> we will talk about what some of those dividing lines were and the strange bed fellows that were either for it or against it. but i also want to set the scene on what life was like for women after the passage of the 19th amendment in 1920. how of course they now had the right to vote but little else in

terms of rights. and of course we know women of color really didn't each have the right to vote. tell us what life was like in terms of rights for women after suffrage. >> okay. that's a great question. before i get into the 19th amendment, i just want to say the main argument of my book so people kind of understand how i am getting at it. >> of course. >> the main argument is that the original e.r.a. conflict created gendered citizenship in the united states. so even though the 19th amendment disrupted the traditional understanding of u.s. citizenship that had given men -- over tradition and law and custom, the original e.r.a. conflict modernized or updated the justification for sex specific treatment in the original aechlt conflict. to unpack that to get at your question about what women were facing after the 19th amendment

it is important to recognize that the u.s. legal system was founded on a profound commitment to the maleness of rights bearing citizenship. so u.s. legal and political authorities understood white women, and then after the civil war, black women, to be citizens and that they were inhabitants of the country. when it came to being a full citizen who enjoyed all the rights of citizenship, rights and customs denied women rights of citizenship because political authorities believed all women were inhrntly dependent weak creatures who relied on others, especially men, for survival. i am not going to go into all of that legal history. i dive into it in the first chapter of my book if you are curious. but it is important to understand that it gave men authorities over women and law and in custom.

it is also important to understand that the category of sex was commonly used as a valid reason to restrict women in the home and in public life. so before and after the 19th amendment, there were an array of sex specific laws and policies that denied women the right to hold public office, sever on juries, work in certain occupations, have an independent nationality status. and there were an array of laws and customers that continued to favor husbands and fathers over wives and daughters with regard to property, earnings, contracting, inheritance, and guardianship rights. so when the 19th amendment was passed in 1920. what it did is it removed sex as a valid reason for denying women the right to vote. for those that don't know the los angeles it was something along the lines of a right of a

u.s. citizen to vote cannot be abridged or denied on account of sex. and the implicit suggestion with that wording is that it affirmed women's right to vote. because it removed sex as a valid reason for restricting the right to vote it raised all these other questions about okay, well, can sex be a vold reason still for limiting and restricting all these other rights, like to serve on juries and hold public office. a lot of debates and questions arose in the wake of the 19th amendment regarding women's legal status going forward. a lot of debates concerned, okay, what were the constitutional ramifications and effects of the 19th amendment? were there implications beyond the vote? do women have broader political rights now? underlying all of these questions were well what are the rights to citizenship after all? should women still be held to a different legal status or should they be held to the same status of men going forward? something i touch upon in a

piece that i wrote for gender on the ballot was how some of these arguments played out with regard to women's right to hold public office. each after the 19th amendment there were still etricks on a woman's right to hold public office. so the debates played out in the political discourse of the early 1920s and in several court cases. for the purpose of my book, what you see is those debates over what the 19th amendment meant evolve into the original conflict over the equal rights amendment as two different interpretations of equal rights developed. if you want, i can bring up alice paul. >> yeah. i think people were familiar with alice paul's role in the

suffrageettes. but she plays a role in this as well. tell us about that. >> as all of these questions are going on about what women's legal status, what are the nature of rights now that women implicitly had the right to vote, a group of individuals, which alice paul was the leader of decided that an additional constitutional amendment was needed to resolve all of these issues regarding women's legal status. i will give a back fwroupd on alice paul just in case people aren't familiar. >> yeah. >> she was an incredibly influential suffrage leader, as you said. some scholars describe her as representing more of the militant side of the suffrage movement. she founded the national women's party, nwp and she and her party are famous for picketing the white house, for political cause, cause of suffrage. they were jailed when they picketed the white house and

jailed. they did a hunger strike in jail for the cause of suffrage. she was known for organizing the massive and spectacular suffrage parade in washington, d.c. around wilson's inauguration. she was known for capturing the attention of the press in the name of the cause of suffrage. alice paul in her very good friend another leader at the national women's party got together with an up-and-coming legal scholar by the name of albert levity of the george washington university. he was already trying to secure women's rights in certain areas. they got together in the spring of 1921 to figure out what to do to resolve these issues around women's rights. i just want to say -- so they came to the idea of pursuing an additional constitutional amendment. but at first this additional constitutional amendment was

really more of a clarifying amendment to clarify what women's rights should be going forward. so it wasn't at this point embracing complete constitutional equality that you would see in the e.r.a. later on. albert levity actually wrote the first draft of this qualifying amendment. it was lengthy and he wrote down every single right they were trying to get for women, like to sever on a jury, hold public office, things of that nature. at that point things really took off. alice paul wanted the drafting process to be collaborative and a shared effort. so she consciously went out and involved individuals into the process. ross could pound wrote up some drafts. albert levity wrote 175 and some

drafts. dean acheson, who would go on to be a influential policy adviser for presidents wrote drafts, gave advice. people in the nwp, outside the nwp. it was a collaborative evident. it was great to go through all the source asks see all the collaboration at play. but things started to break down. in 1921 the collaborative kind of fell apart -- well, it definitely fell apart. the main reason that it fell apart is because some of the people involved wanted the clarifying amendment to include a prosigs that would secure what they believed to be women's natural right to special protection. at this point, alice paul wasn't against that idea, but she wasn't for it. she was kind of like on the fence about it all. when she wouldn't commit to it -- i am summarizing a complicated history. i go into way more detail in the book.

but when she wouldn't commitment to this clause to protect what is believed to be woman's natural rights to special protection, the individuals committed to that idea said to alice paul, you are on your own, we are not going to help you anymore. it was quite a dramatic and emotional breakdown. albert levity and alice paul got into a humongous fight. he was one of the people that wanted a saving clause. it was distressful for alice paul. at that point she decided to put the amendment on hold. this is winter of 1921. and she launched with the national woman's party a major investigation into the legal status of women which really took off in january, 1922. so it is important to understand this massive research project because it really gets to the idea what were women facing in the 1920s in terms of legalized sex discrimination. so many of the problemthic laws restricting women's autonomy and opportunities were on the state

level and varied from state to state. it was a very confusing patchwork of laws, what alice paul was thinking, let's report them, correct me if i'm wrongcal them, lets see if any are beneficial for women or if they are all harmful. in this massive research project which lasted from the 1920s into the 1930s. nwp wrote several reports through this time but it was through this process that the nwp became way more critical of the idea of sex specific treatment and sex specific laws and more attached to the idea of complete constitutional sexual equality. i want to say some of things that they found in their reports, the s.e.c. specific laws that were harmful to women. and in some of the reports they showed that i think it was in 40 different states, property acquired through the joint effort of husband and wives still primarily belonged to the husband.

several states still had husbands controlling women's earning. several states still prohibited women from entering into contracts without their husband's permission. as i have already said, multiple states restricted rights to serve on juries, hold public office, work in certain occupations. there are a lot of laws favoring men and giving men dominance over women. and like i said through the research into these laws, the nwp became way more attached to the idea that sex specific treatment was always going to be problematic for women, always going to be harmful for women and that women didn't just need a clarifying amendment, they needed an amendment that would unmance paid them from a legal system that put them in a subservient position. >> you mentioned emancipate, and you also mentioned special protection. this is how you kind of divide

the pro-e.r.a. set and the anti--e.r.a. set, if you will. give us a sense of those definitions and who is lining up on each side of those arguments. and like i mentioned earlier, there are these strange bed fellows, meaning that you have liberals and conservatives within one wing and liberals and conservatives within another wing. >> i will first dive into emancipationism a little bit. then i will get into the protectionist side. emancipationists were e.r.a. supporters. they supported the e.r.a. i use the wordy mance paid to capture the pro-e.r.a. position because e.r.a. supporters often actually used the exact wordy mance paid or to emancipate when trying to describe the e.r.a.'s purpose. so for e.r.a. supporters, women need to be fully emancipated

from their legal subservient position in american society. and they thought that the only way to do that was through the strength of a constitutional amendment that would remove sex as a valid legal category in and of itself. so they would basically attack specific laws and sex specific policies. and the tig was that sex could never actually be beneficial for women and then this reinforced the idea that men should have dominance and control over women and that women can't have autonomy over their own bodies and their own lives. so for emancipationists, persistent legal reinstructions on civic autonomy in the wake of

suffrage created not only fluctuating definitions of women's legal personhood but also constitutional inconsistencies with regards to the rights of american citizens so for emancipationists constitutional sex equality was the only way to unmance paid legal voters. just to back up and get to history. as the national women's party is conducting this research project into the variations in william's legal status across the states, event ally alice paul came back around to writing the amendment. and she finalized the writing of the fifth amendment in 1923. but before she came to that wording, she originally based some of her early draft of the amendment on the language of the 13th amendment. for those that don't know, the 13th amendment is the amendment that freed enslaved persons after the civil war. and the reason that alice paul

did this is because she believed that a lot of the state level marital status laws were a type of involuntary servitude for married women. a lot of these -- i don't want to get too much into the specifics of the legal aspects because it can be confusing but a lot of the marital status laws were formed around the notion that husbands had a right to the body and the free domestic labor of their wives. again, from alice paul's standpoint, this is a type of involuntary servitude for women. but through the course of the research project alice paul and other nwp members realize it wasn't just married women suffering from these laws, it was all women in general. that's why she brought in the wording in 1923. it was men and women shall have call rights throughout the united states and every place subject to its jurisdiction and

congress should have the power to enforce this article by appropriation. a very broad -- >> brief. >> a broad amendment that again embraces this idea of complete constitutional sexual equality men and women citizens. i want to say, because some people don't know this. alice paul would reword the amendment once more in 1943 when the e.r.a. was gaining in popularity. a few congressmembers suggested it would be good to reword it to align more with the 19th amendment. the 1943 rephrasing by alice paul is equality of rights under the law shall shot be denied or abridged by the united states or any state on account of sex. that language is the same language we have today for the e.r.a. the 1943 rephrasing of the e.r.a. is the same language for the e.r.a. in its primary cause in the '70s and to this day. back to the us a of

emancipationists. in the 1920s, most emancipationists were women's of the women's national party. there wasn't much support for the e.r.a. in the 1920s. that's going to change in the mid to late 1930s and 1940s. as support is increasing for the e.r.a. at that point, the emancipationist's position is expanding to include pronounced variations or pronounced branches in regards to its liberal conservative variations. in other words -- >> let me stop you right there for a second, though, because what's going on in the 1930s that is helping this movement take off? >> okay. so in the 1930s w the great depression, there was an increase in the regulation of working women on the thinking that working women were taking jobs away from men and men needed jobs more than women because men were providers and

women weren't. that's the thinking. so there were restrictions and policies to try to push women out of the work force to open up jobs for men. so as these restrictions are mounting, you are having more and more working women realize the potential harms embedded in sex specific labor policies. that's when they start to come more and more over to the idea of the e.r.a. and sex -- and having complete constitutional equality. then it takes off in world war ii. i can get into that later. that's primarily because of the economic demands of the war. it brought more women into the work force. >> then the labor laws come back around, too, because then that is also an argument for the protectionist side, right? >> great. great point. i feel like i am skipping ahead but real quick, in world war ii the sex specific labor laws were suspended because they needed more women to work to fulfill the economic demands of the war.

then this undermined the idea that women are inherently incapable of performing the same tasks as men. back to what i was saying with as the emancipation position is growing in the 1930s and taking move the 1940s you are seeing expansion with conservative and liberal -- you have conservative emancipationists found in the pro e.r.a. position was arguments that aligned with their support for private enterprise and their criticisms of the government's involvement in the economy. so they would often frame their arguments for the e.r.a. around notions of a citizen's right to economic self fulfill men and that men and women should be able to parttate paid in the marketplace in the same terms. also there is a little bit -- i should also say, with

conservative emancipationists they are understanding rights in terms of negative rights. seeing rights as a way to shield individuals from government intrusion in their lives. also a little bit of legal formalism playing out in some of the conservative arguments for the e.r.a. which is basically the idea that if sex isn't a valid reason to withhold the right to vote, then it can't be used to withhold other rights. and will be the you have to have a consistency in the law. >> conservatives support the the e.r.a., most people are like, what are you talking about? so it is almost a sort of libertarian component right, maybe, of -- >> that's a great point. and some of my students from my e.r.a. class actually pointed that out, too. i think that's a very fair connection to make. but then you are also having liberal emancipationists, liberal e.r.a. supporters.

>> right. >> they are seeing in the e.r.a. more positive rights. they are thinking about the e.r.a. in terms of expanding the government's influence, and ensuring that the government has a responsibility to protect men workers as well as women workers. and ensuring that the government offers policies that will ensure economic security and social well-being for men and women citizens alike. now, even with these differences in how they are seeing what the e.r.a. could do if passed, both conservative and liberal emancipationists are still expressing their core support for the e.r.a. in the same terms, men and women should be able the participate as stips on the same terms. and sex shunt be taken into account in and of itself. men and women should have full equality under the law. now there is the other side. it is a little bit more confusing to talk about this side because i think people had

some preconceived notions of certain definitions. let me take a sip of water for a second. >> yeah. so there will be -- i mean you will talk about this, sort of the liberal component of the anti-e.r.a. argument? >> yes. yes. which is -- >> again, like what? >> a lot of peep find it surprising that you have individual likes eleanor roosevelt opposing the e.r.a. >> surprising to learn. >> she is what i call liberal protectionist. the anti-e.r.a. side i describe as protectionism or protectionists. and i should just point out for people who haven't read my book, the way that i am using the term protectionism in my study, i'm not professor exclusively to advocates of special labor legislation. for those that don't know special labor legislation or special labor laws arose in the late 19th and early 20th centuries as a way to regulate

women's working conditions and shield women from economic economic exploitation. these were sex specific labor laws that determined the jobs and tasks that women were allowed to perform. it regulated their work hours. prohibited them from working at night in certain instances. sometimes gave them minimum wage laws but these regulations are really based on the idea that all women were mothers or potential mothers and women's roles in home necessitated the extra oversight from the government? right. >> so those -- so you have liberal minded e.r.a. opponents who love those labor laws and oppose the e.r.a. as a threat to those labor laws. and you also have conservative minded individuals who do not like labor laws but they are still opposing the e.r.a. so both conservative and liberal protectionists believed that women required special

protection. they just difd in where that protection should come from. so for conservative protectionists, women's protection should primarily come from the male head of the household. they thought that government reform efforts like the sexual labor laws undermined husband's governing authority in the household. now liberal protectionists believed that government reform efforts could also serve as effective instruments of protection for women. even with those differences, show, you still have, like i said before, liberal conservative protectionist believing women needed special consideration and special protection because of their roles as mothers and caretakers of the home. so a shared desire to preserve the law's ability to treat men and women differently on account of sex after the passage of the 19th amendment and in the face of the developing equal rights campaign fueled the protectionist position. alongside this desire, protectionists believed that

while women should be respected as rights bearing citizens, they didn't want the law to car gotically group women's rights with men's rights. so as i describe in my book, protectionists reasoned that actual sexual fairness securing two distinction but equally valued rights for men and women citizens. a key point here is that the arguments against the e.r.a. didn't simply resolve around the idea that women shouldn't have rights or that they should be denied their rights as full citizens. in actuality, e.r.a. opponents insist they were the ones who were protecting women's rights. >> protectionist, the wording of that makes a lot of sense. and that is also not dissimilar to what we see in the argument against the e.r.a. in the '70s, right? >> exactly. yes. i do, in my epilogue, suggest that -- it's little bit more

confusing than what i am going to say right now. but a lot of the arguments that phyllis schlafly appealed to in the 1970s were arguments that were put forward in the original e.r.a. conflict. one pick thing to note, what protectionists were doing, through the course of the e.r.a. conflict protectionists moved the argument against equal rights or equal legal treatment away from a pre19th amendment ephesus on the reasons for excluding women's rights on citizenship to develop a dissinkt citizenship for women. for protectionists women's special rights include things like being exempted from military service, shielded from the ravages of capitalism, and kept safe in their domestic roles. again, from the protectionist point of view it wasn't that women shouldn't have rights, it's that they should have their

own separate rights. this is how you see the e.r.a. conflict transforming our citizenship two a dual gender model with a separation of rights specific to men and women. >> i wanted to ask you. you mentioned eleanor roosevelt, which makes me think of the presses. right? can you talk a little bit about presidential support or opposition to the e.r.a. during that time period with fdr, truman, eyen hour who were back and forth on the amendment, and give a little context as to maybe why. >> yes. okay. the fdr administration, with the exception of his second vice president wallace -- because the fdr administration was really full of a lot of liberal protectionists -- again, the thinking for liberal

protectionists is that women needed sex specific labor laws because women special needs that special treatment would recognize and fulfill. i have a little ant dote to add here. when fdr had passed away, fdr supposedly said, the greatest threat to the amendment has now been removed. that shows you how intensely opposed to the e.r.a. the fdr administration was. now, truman, though, actually came out in support of the e.r.a. when he was a senator. and then he reaffirmed that support when he became president. part of that, the significance of that shows how much the e.r.a. gained in popularity during the 1940s. as i talk about, i think it's in chapter five, he started to back away from the amendment a lot through the course of his presidency. that's because so many -- when

the protectionists started to row assert thej themselves in the post war era, they really went after truman and really said to him, if you open flee support the e.r.a., we are going to withdraw our support from you. so when i went to the presidential library, truman's presidential library and i went through some of his -- some of the related source materials, some of his presidential advisers -- it is political dynamite. either way you throw it, it is going to go off in your face. he didn't come out and say he was against it but he just decided to top talking about it. and thennisen hour -- >> that doesn't sound like a politician. >> i know. eisenhower kind of did a similar thing. so when eisenhower was elected e.r.a. supporters thought that would be a great thing for the e.r.a. because they thought he would align with the emancipationist position.

and he came out in a speech in madison square garden and said i support the e.r.a. they were all excited about it. but then if you go through his presidential source materials as i did at his library, you see that he was saying in private things like i don't know what the e.r.a. is. so i mean his support for it was pretty lackluster. again, i think it was his secretary of labor was very against the e.r.a. for the same idea, women need special protection in the industrial realm. and so probably because of his secretary of labor, eisenhower like truman also backed away. he didn't come out to say he was against it. he again decided to be quiet about it. that shows you how protectionists were able to reassert their dominance in the post par period. >> right. so you, in the book, original

conflict over the equally rights attempt from 1920 to 1963. why 1963? what's significant about that time? >> great question. so let me just back up for a second. >> yeah. >> as i said n the 1920s there wasn't very much progress on the e.r.a. then there was moment numb the late 1930s and taking off in the 1940s. after the war ended certain societal environments create a ripe environment. the post war readjustment anxiety and the feeling that stability would only come back with women left their jobs in the work force and returned home allowed protectionists to begun reassert their dominance. i am going to go into a little bit of detail here.

the idea that women left the work force after the war and stayed home is kind of a myth. in the immediate post world war ii period women did leave the work force, but then they went back to work. i think it is 1948, the numbers of women working in the work force started to increase again dramatically to the point that in the 1950s the numbers of women working outside the home was higher than that in world war ii. more women working outside the home is aligning with emancipation that women shouldn't be confined to having primary duties in the home. that's creating what i call a lingering emancipation impulse. so the e.r.a. is still floating around. both political parties endorse it in 1948 and it is brought to the floor three times. which is annoying to

protectionists. in order the stamp out the e.r.a. they had to readjust their strategy not just being against the e.r.a. but also offer up their own alternative comprehensive measures. protectionists put forward the idea that the best thing for a women would be a limited equality but recognize both men and women of having equally value but having a separation in rights because of a separation in roles. alternative things like the women's status bill, and then the biggest one is the president's commission on the status of women. the president's commission on the status of women released its final record in 1963. and that report is such a big deal when it comes to the e.r.a. soester peterson, the big architect at the pcsw, which is the abbreviation for the president's commission on the status of w, she was an ardent

e.r.a. opponent and believed that with this commission they could make the e.r.a. unnecessary and to offer up alternative ways for improving women's status in what she called a balanced and practical approach towards removing the arbitrary discriminations on women and keeping what she believed to be equitable distinctions in place. in the pcsw's final report, it is so important, as i describe in chapter 6 because it is like protections finally came to -- an answer that they were trying to develop, you know, since the 1920s, basically, which is this idea of how do we get the law to recognize women as full rights bearing citizens without taking away the law's ability to treat women differently from men? >> right. >> what they did in the pcsw is offer up an alternative constitutional approach. to summarize it quickly. this alternative basically recommended that interested

parties should pursue litigation of a supposedly arbitrary legal sex discrimination with the idea of it going up to the supreme court and having the supreme court rule that arbitrary sex discrimination against women violated women's rights as since under the 14th amendment. so the thinking was, we could say that the e.r.a. is not needed because women have the 14th amendment, which will allow the court to draw a clear line between arbitrary discrimination and supposedly equitable distinctions. so that you would find a limited constitutional equality for men and women citizens. >> great. that was all super helpful. so we have covered sort of the arc. and we have a couple of questions that i want to try to get to in our remaining minutes with you here. let's see. this is an interesting question

from a.j., who asks, was there religious support of the e.r.a.? >> religious support for the -- well, that's a good question. i -- it's easier to say there was religious opposition to the e.r.a. as you definitely see in the 1970s, opposition from religion. and you see it not to the same extent as the '70s, but you see religious opposition in the original conflict. but support, you know, i have to say i didn't see it, actually, clearly, in the source materials that i was looking through. it's not to say it isn't there, it's just something i didn't see. >> a question from sydney. did you find any differing levels of support based on race? >> that's a very good question. and that's not an easy question to answer. i actually have some notes here to make sure that i can answer

it the best of my ability. okay, so, like so many other areas and the original e.r.a. conflict, the role of race, you see overlaps, and not a clear dividing line. what i mean by that is you have black americans supporting it and opposing it. you have racist ideas personal nating the pro e.r.a. position and the anti-e.r.a. position, and you have support for civil rights legislation and the civil rights movement on both the antiand pro-aechlt positions. just to give a little bit of detail -- and i won't go too much into detail here because i know we are shorter on time. but mary church terrell of the national association of colored women, she was a big e.r.a. supporter by the late 1930s. and her organization endorsed the e.r.a. but mary mclloyd about than to who was a well-known civil

rights activist during the 1930s and '40s was more aligned with the protectionist stance. she was supporting the women's status bill which was a protectionist measure to kind of stamp out the e.r.a. then you also have racist attitudes like i said pervading both the pro and anti-positions. you have someone like florence kelly who was a social reformer and big e.r.a. opponent testifying in congress in the 1920s saying something to the effect of if the e.r.a. were to pass it would mean that black men and white women would have the same rights. just a very racially charged argument to try to flare up people's opinions. and then you also have people on the protectionist side likester peterson and representative emmanuel seller who hated the e.r.a. but also were very strong supporters of the civil rights

movement. and in their mind, racial discriminations were unnatural transgressions against a person. but they thought that sex discrimination could be equitable because they believed that men and women were so different in their social and biological roles in society. then on the pro ooechlt said you have people like mary church terrell and other individuals like emma lutz of the national women's party seen in the e.r.a. being a part of one large struggle for the equality of all persons. but then you also have -- on the pro e.r.a. side, individuals like representative howard smith, that was a segregationist, a white supremacist, a racist, a not good person in many ways supporting the e.r.a. because in his mind he believed that it would ensure that black americans didn't have an advantage over white women. in his mind the e.r.a. meant

equality for white plenty and white women. again, with so many areas this the original e.r.a. conflict you see these blurs lines. >> yeah, sure. here's a question i am sure you never get. dealing with what's next, right? it is a great question, though, from isabelle. she says given the recent renewed interest in the e.r.a., we think special hearings, conversations aren't virginia being the 38th state to ratify. of course we all watched the mini series mrs. america. and have learned about that. and then people taking it to the next level here. do you think we -- do you think that we are in the third conflict? >> i am glad she said that because that's something that we talked about in our class. yes, i do. i do think we are in a third e.r.a. conflict. because i am a historian it is easier for me to talk about things that already happened.

i am better at analyzing things when the dust has settled. but the third e.r.a. conflict is still unfolding. and i am very interested in how certain things are playing out. i will say that -- and i say this in my epilogue, you still see protectionists and emancipationist core ideas influencing both the pro and anti-e.r.a. positions. but there are also some developments i mean because we have now such a more fluid understanding of gender than what was in the original conflict and even than what was in the 1970s. i don't know how that's impacting the struggle. i know it is. but i haven't come to an opinion on exactly how it is impacting it. i guess let's wait a couple of years and i will have a better understanding of it once things settled but we are absolutely in a third e.r.a. conflict rue no along the same lines, faith is asking what do you think the

likelihood is of the e.r.a. being ratified now? >> that's a good question. okay. so i will say that i had written an op ed in the "washington post" in march, 2021, basically kinds of addressing that idea of the likelihood for the e.r.a. to pass. so for those that don't know, the e.r.a. has recently gained the three state ratifications that it needed to have the 38 states for full ratification. but it's not yet ratified yet because of ongoing questions about the deadline and if it is valid or not. i am mott going to get into all the details there with that. but what i said in that "washington post" op ed is when society goes through major social upheavals like the great depression and world war ii it creates the potential for the -- to line up with emancipation.

so the upheaval we went through with the covid pandemic might help push it through to get fully ratified. i am not sure if that window has closed but it is possible it has provided the extra push that supporters have needed. >> great. >> let's see. i think -- here's one more question. has women's growing representation in congress in state legislatures over the past century impacted the fate of the e.r.a.? >> that's a great question. do you think it is saying that with more woman in congress there is more likely -- >> yeah. >> i don't know. >> like it would be passed or maybe there is less need for it

because we have more representation. i don't know. i guess either way. >> i will say in the original e.r.a. conflict there were a certain amount of women congress members that opposed the e.r.a. because of again this thought it was better for women to have their own set of rights and to have specific treatment. just because you have women in congress doesn't correlate to having an increase in support for the e.r.a. i think it has to deal with having a difference in views of what men and women's roles are in society. having a more fluid or more traditional approach to it. you know, sometimes i see floating around the idea of is the e.r.a. necessary with the fact that there are so many more advancements for women. i mean there -- i definitely believe there is still a lot of societal barriers against women. but yeah, i have seen people put forward the argument that there

is nowhere near the same amount of legal discriminations against women as there was in the original e.r.a. conflict. and that amendment goes after laws. it is a constitutional amendment. >> yeah. >> i have seen people say, would it really help with the continued disadvantages against women which are more due to social practices than legalized sex discrimination. i will say what i see as the response to that from e.r.a. supporters today is something along the lines of the e.r.a. is still necessary because it would provide a robust break from that legal tradition that has produced so many of those social practices and social inequities against women. so -- >> and do you think for example, looking back to the phyllis schlafly days won. arguments against this e.r.a.

was military service and women in combat, and the draft, et cetera. that -- because we now have, you know, women in the military, has that argument been kind of removed from the picture? >> i would say so. if you go to the eagle form website they actually still have this idea that the aechlt would force women into combat in the same level as men. again it gets back to the protectionist idea that women have special rights, one of those being excluded from military service. but as you said in recent years there has been greater movement towards the recognition that women and -- that there should be a gender equality in terms of civic obligations. a lot of times civic obligations go hand in hand with rights. and the thinking is, to have certain rights, you need to be able to carry out certain obligations. so i think what you were referring to is n-2013, the

department of defense officially left of lifted the ban of women serving in combat positions. two years later the department of defense removed all gender based restrictions to bake women eligible for every military service role n. 2019 i think it was a federal judge ruled that the only male requirement for the selective service draft system was unconstitutional and sexually discriminatory. it was a declarer to judgment so it didn't necessarily produce a court order. so the only male draft is still in place. again, when we see this movement towards gender equality in terms of civic obligations i believe it opens up a pathway for greater gender equality in terms of rights. >> great. i think we are out of time. but thank you for taking us through this amazing arc, and your book. i would encourage everybody to have an opportunity to check it out. so dr. dewolf, thank you so

much. >> thank you. >> -- for talking with us. american history tv. saturdays on c-span2, exploring the people and events that tell the american story. at 2:00 p.m. eastern on the presidency, peggy noonan, former speech writer for ronald reagan commemorates the former president's birthday during at aecht event at his presidential library in simi valley, california. then on conversations with historians we bring you part one of a six hour conversation with historian and author douglas brinkley. he talks about his education working at used book and music stores and muddy waters and -- meme is the movie you know in just a couple of months i will be leaving my position. i hope you'l