history. good evening everybody. i'm betsy fischer martin the executive director of the women in politics institute at american university and welcome to our virtual series women on wednesdays. we are glad that you could join us if those of you need to our events wpi is a nonprofit and nonpartisan institute in au school of public affairs that

aims to close the gender gap in political leadership and we offer academic and practical campaign training and we facilitate research and discussions like this on women in politics. so tonight we want to take a look back all the way back 100 years to the arrow right after the ratification and passage of the 19th amendment because understandably the fight for women's equality did not stop with the success of the suffrage movement. there was more to do and that's but our discussion will center on this evening with dr. rebecca wolfe who has just the wolf. sorry. okay was written a amazingly book. it's entitled gendered citizenship the original conflict over the equal rights amendment 1920 to 1963 and dr. wolfe de wolf is a historian who aren't her phd right here at american university and we are proud that she is also a wpi

course instructor this semester teaching a class on this very subject and i'm sure we have a few of her students joining us this evening. i want to let everybody know before we start that we're going to say plenty of time for your questions at the bottom of the screen. you will see ask the question button. so please don't be shy feel free to type your question in there and also upvote other people's questions that you may be interested in and if you miss any of the discussion tonight, want to share it with friends the replay will be available at the same length that you use to register. so rebecca welcome. thanks for being here. very excited to be here. thank you for having me. of course, so we have so 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 twofer. it's you have an academic

component obviously with lots of footnotes and references and sources, but it also reads really really well and it's just super interesting to read so it's it's i think for two two audiences. so anyway, i would recommend anybody who's interested in the subject to grab a copy of rebecca's book. it's you can see the green link on the screen and there's even a special discount code in the chat if you want to buy it, but let me start rebecca with two kind of scenes that are um the first being how set on you mean for how you as a student of history really decided to study this particular time period in the history of the era because i i will note that if you're with us tonight, and you're thinking wasn't the fight over the era really in the 70s with delish schlafly gloria steinem. you're probably not alone if you think that right that earlier

era is really not written about nearly to the extent that the later era of course, and the battle has been so tell us why this moment in is particularly important. so that's a really great question and i'm gonna just start off of how i became interested in the eri to give a little bit of foundation. so just some background. this book is based off of my phd dissertation research and i first came to the era my first year of my phd program, so 2008-2009 and i'll just say as an aside things with the era in 2008 2009 are were much different back then than they are today. there's a lot more support for the era today a more knowledge about it. but at this earlier time there was really just a general lack of knowledge about the era so i came to the topic because my phd advisor at the time alan lichmann asked me to give a lecture on the era for a class

that i was teaching assistant for and so i got into the research at that point. i was like, okay, this is an interesting topic, but what really got me going is after i gave the lecture. i opened it up to the class. discussion and some of the students that sit there along the lines of they had no idea that the eri wasn't ratified. so that was interesting but a considerable amount of students said something along the lines of well. yeah, we recognize that they're still persistent sex discrimination against women, but we don't see the era as a solution to that problem so that just like set off a lightning bolt of curiosity for me. why hadn't the recognition of persistent sex discrimination not cause more of a robust push for the era, so i really want to solve what seems like a disconnect between realizing that they're still ongoing problems in society that are holding women back but not thinking that the era is a solution to that problem. um, so around this time i should also say that i had to read a

book for a graduate course called at susan douglas's where the girls are and it's a great book on the history of women's media or the history of media is for trail women and she has this great and in discussion of the era in the 1970s as a representing the classic catfight imagery that we so often see with how women are portrayed in the media. so this cafe imagery has it, you know, it depicts woman is constantly fine. you have one another overly emotional. they just can't get along and the implicit suggestion from this imagery is that this is why women aren't fit for leadership positions. and so that strongly impacted how i approached the era. i really wanted to get away from the catfight imagery. i wanted to see if and how the era struggle may have represented more than a struggle between two groups of women. and so at first i was just interested in all parts of the era, so i was writing like all my graduate papers on it just being quite obsessive about it. but i became more drawn to the

earliest years the era conflict because as you mentioned very little is written about it, and it seems like a mysterious part of the era's history because so many of the dividing lines that you see in other areas of us history. don't play out the same way and the original era conflict. so what i mean by that is you have conservative and liberals on both sides of the issue. you have men and women on both sides the issue feminists on both sides the issue, so it's just not an easy conflict to figure out what the dividing lines were because your cd seen overlaps everywhere. so i really wanted to understand what was going on. why does the original eri conflict call into question so many of our conceptual ways of thinking about trends in us history and another thing to say about the original era conflict is individuals that we typically cheer as champions of human rights like eleanor roosevelt. she opposed the era and people like francis perkins the first secretary first woman secretary

of labor and she's typically cast as a hero a woman's history. she also posed the era. so it just begs this question of well, what's really going on what is motivating people to be opposed to it or to support so i really wanted to figure out the dividing line was okay, and we're going to talk about some of those about those dividing lines were and sort of the strange valve fellows that are before for it or against it, but i just want to also set the scene on what life was like for women after the passage of the 19th amendment in 1920 how of course they now then had the right to vote but little else in terms of rights and of course, we know women of color really didn't even have the right to vote. so tell us what life was like in terms of rights for women after suffrage. okay, so that's a great question and before i get into life after the 19th amendment the ways in which the 19th amendment served as a springboard for the original area conflict. i just want to say the main argument of my book.

so people kind of understand how i'm getting at it. so the main argument is that the original era conflict created gendered citizenship and the united states. so even though the 19th and disrupted the traditional understanding of us citizenship that had given an authority over women and law and in custom disparities between men and women's physicians persisted because eria opponents and the original era conflict modernized or updated that justification for sex-specific treatment in the original eri conflict. so to unpack that a little bit to get at your question about what women were facing after the 19th amendment. it's important to recognize that the us legal system was founded on a profound commitment to the malness of rights bearing citizenship. so us 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, but when it came to being a full citizen or

citizen who enjoyed all the rights of citizenship united states laws and customs denied women that status of rights varying citizenship because us legal and political author. is believed that all women were inherently dependent weak creatures who relied on others, especially men for survival, so i'm not going to go fully into all that legal history. if anyone's curious. i really dive into it in the first chapter of my book, but it's important to understand that the ritual masculine conception of full us citizenship gave met authority over women and law and in custom and it's also important to understand that the category of sex was commonly used as a valid reason to restrict women's opportunities and autonomy 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 or limited women's right to hold public office serve on juries were concerned

occupations even have an independent nationality status and there were also an array of sex-based laws and customs that continue to favor husbands over start continue to 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 withholding the right to vote. so for those that don't know the actual language at the 19th amendment i'm going to try to say off the top of my head here was something along the lines of the right of a us citizen to vote cannot be abridged or denied on account of sex and the implicit suggestion with that wearing is that it affirmed women's right to vote. but because it removed sex is a valid reason for restricting the right to vote it raised all these other questions about. okay, well can sex be a valid reason still for limiting and restricting all these other rights like the right to serve

on juries and whole public office. so a lot of debates and questions arose and 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 their implications beyond the vote do women have broader political rights now and underlining all these questions were well, what are the rights of citizenship after all should women still be held to a different legal status or should they be held to the same status as men now going forward and something i kind of touch upon and the piece that i wrote for gender on the ballot was about how some of this these arguments played out regard to women's right to hold public office even after the 19th amendment there were still restrictions on women's right to hold public office. so the concerns and the debates about the transformative possibilities of the 19th amendment, you know played out in the political discourse of the early 1920s and and in

several court cases and for the purpose of my book what you see is those debates over what the 19th amendment meant evolved into the original conflict over the equal rights amendment as two different interpre. stations that the principles of us citizenship developed. so if you want i can touch upon how this brings in alice paul. yeah, yeah because i was gonna ask you about her. i mean obviously, you know, we had spent the whole 2020 right talking about the suffrage centennial talking about suffragettes and i i think people familiar with alex alex paul's role in all of that, but she plays a big role in this as well. tell us tell us about it. okay, so as all these questions are going on about what's women's legal status. what are the nature of rights now that women have their best, you know 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 in order to resolve all these issues regarding women's legal status. so i'll just give a little background on alice paul just in case some people aren't familiar. so alice paul was an incredibly influential suffrage later as you said some scholars describe her as representing more of the militant side at the suffrage movement. so she's famous for she found at the national women's party nwp and she and her party are famous for picketing the white house for political cause the cause of suffrage they were arrested when they were picking the white house and jail and they did a hunger strike in jail for the cause of suffrage and then they were forced fed. she's also well known for orchest. an organizing the massive and spectacular suffrage parade and washington dc in 1913 and around president wilson's inaugural celebration. so alice paul was a brilliant strategist for capturing the attention at the press and the overall public to the cause of suffrage. so as all these questions are

going on and the wake of the 19th amendment alice paul and her very good friend elsie hill another leader of the national women's party. got together with a up-and-coming legal scholar by the name of albert levitt of the george washington university. he was already working on trying to secure women's rights in certain areas. they got together in the spring in 1921 to figure out what to do to resolve these issues around women's rights, and i just want to say at first so they came to the idea of pursuing an additional constitutional amendment, but at first this additional constitutional amendment was really more of like a clarifying amendment to really kind of clarify what women's rights should be going forward so wasn't at this point. embracing the complete constitutional equality that you would see in the era later on so albert levitt actually wrote the first draft of this clarifying amendment. it was very lengthy and he literally wrote every single right that they were trying to

get for women like the right to serve on juries hold public office have an independent nationality status things of that nature and at that point things really just took off alice paul really wanted this drafting process to be collaborative and a shared effort so she consciously went out and brought people into the drafting process. so there was an array of individuals involved, which i tried to capture in chapter 2 of my book like roscoe pound. he wrote up some drafts albert. levitt said the he wrote 75 different drafts alice paul wrote a couple hundred different drafts. let's see who else was involved dean atchison who would go on to be an influential for policy advisor for presidents he wrote a couple of drafts and gave some advice some lawyers within the nwp helped out people outside the nwp, so it's just a very collaborative effort. it was really great to go through the sources and see all the different ideas at play but things start to break down and

the fall of 1921. they the collaborative effort kind of fell apart and think about it definitely fell apart. so the main reason that it fell apart is because some of the people involved wanted the clarifying amendment to include a provision that would secure what they believed to be women's natural right to special protection and at this point alice paul wasn't against that idea, but she wasn't for she was kind of like on the fence about it all and when she wouldn't commit to it. i just i am like summarizing a very complicated history, which i go way more into detail my book. but when she wouldn't commit to that saving clause or this clause to protect women or protect what was believed to be woman's natural rights special protection the individuals committed to that idea said to alice paul, you're on your own. we're not going to help you anymore, and it was actually quite a dramatic and emotional breakdown albert levitt and al's pong got a humongous fight with you target as he was one that people that wanted a saving

clause and it was very distressful for alice paul. so at that point she decided to put the amendment on hold. so this is the winter of 1921 and she launched with the national women's party a major investigation into the legal status of women, which really took off and january 1922. and so it's important to understand this massive research project because it really gets to the idea what were women facing in the early 1920s in terms of legalized sex discrimination. so so many of the problematic laws restricting women's autonomy and opportun were on the state level and they vary from state to state. so as a very confusing patchwork of laws, and what else paul was thinking is okay. let's go and investigate these laws. let's record them. let's chronicle them. let's see if any of them are beneficial for women or let's see if they're all harmful and so is in this massive research project, which really lasted from the 1920s up into the early

1930s and the nwp wrote several different reports throughout this time, but it was through this process at the nwp became way more critical of the idea sex specific treatment and sex specific laws and more attached to the idea of complete constitutional sexually quality, and i just want to say some of the things that they found and their reports on the sex-specific laws that were harmful to women. so and some of the reports they showed that i think was in 40 different states property acquired through the joint effort of husband and wives still primarily belong the husband several states still had husbands controlling women's earnings several states still prohibited women from entering into contracts without their husbands permission. and then as i've already said the real estate's restricted woman's ability to serve on juries or whole public office work concern occupations some states the father had a right to will away the custody of a child from its mother.

so there's just a lot of laws that are 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 was sick that sex specific treatment was always going to be problematic for women and was always going to be harmful for women and that women didn't just need a clarifying amendment. they need an amendment that was going to emancipate them from legal system that had put them in a subservient position. well and you mentioned emancipate and you also mentioned special protection and this is how you kind of divide. that the pro era set and the anti-era. i said if you will so give us a sense of those definitions and who's lining up on on each side of those arguments and like i mentioned earlier there are these strange bedfellows. meaning that you have considerable liberals and conservatives within one wing

and liberals and conservatives within another wing. yeah, exactly. so, okay, so all first dive into emancipationism a little bit so and then i'll get into the protectionist side. so emancipationists were era supporters. they support the era and i use the word emancipate or emancipation is an emancipationism to capture the pro-era position because era supporters often actually use the exact word emancipate or to emancipate when trying to describe the era's purpose so for era supporters women need a fully emancipated from their legal subservient position and american society and they thought that the only way to do that was through a 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 thinking was

that sex could never actually be beneficial for women sex specific treatment could never actually be beneficial for a woman because such laws always were tied back to these ideas embedded in the american legal tradition that understood women to be inherently weaker and inherently dependent creatures who relied on men and others for survival and then this reinforced the idea that mentioned had 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 restrictions on and civic autonomy and the wake of suffrage created not only fluctuating definitions of women's legal personhood but also constitutional and consistencies with regards to the rights of american citizens. so for emancipation as constitutional sexual equality was the only way to fully emancipate a class of voters from their legal subjugation. so just to back up a second here to get back to the history a

little bit as the natural woman's party is conducting this big research project into the variations in women's legal status across the states eventually as paul came back around to writing the amendment and she finalized the writing of the amendment in 1923. but before she came to that wording, which i'll say in a second she originally based some of her early drafts 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 person. 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. so a lot of these i don't want to get too much into the specifics that the legal aspects because it can be confusing but a lot of these marital status laws were formed around the notion that husbands had a right

to the body and the freedomstic labor of their wives. so again from alice paul's standpoint. this was a type of involuntary servitude for women, but through the course of the research project as paul and other nwp members were realizing it wasn't just married women who were suffering from these sex specific laws and customs. it was all women in general. so that's why she brought in the wording of the era to be what it was in 1923, which i haven't written down just in case i forget okay, so it was men and women shall have equal rights throughout the united states and every place subject to section and congress shall have the power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation. so a very broad amendment that yeah, very broad amendment that again embraces this idea of complete constitutional sexually quality for men and women citizens. i just want to say very importantly because some people don't know this alice paul would reword the amendment once more

in 1943 when the era was gaining in popularity a few congress members suggested to her that it would be good to reword it to align more the language of the 19th amendment. so the 1943 rephrasing by alice paul is equality of rights under the law should not be denied or abridged by the united states or any state on account of sex that language is the same language that we had today for the era. so the 1943 rephrasing of the eras the same language at the era and its primary cause from the 70s and up to this day. okay, so back to emancipation as sorry for all the confusion there. so what helpful? so, all right. so in the 1920s most emancipations were members of the natural woman's party there wasn't that much support for the era in the 1920s. that's gonna change quite dramatically with the increased support for the era in the mid to late 1930s and 1940s. so as support is increasing for the era at that point the

emancipation's position is expanding to include pronounced variations or pronounced branches and and regards to its liberal conservative variations. so in other words, let me just stab you right there though for a second though because what's going on in the 1930s that is helping this movement take off. okay, so um and the 1930s with 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 certain restrictions and policies to try to push women out of the workforce to open up jobs for men and so as these restrictions are mounting you're having more and more working women realize the potential harms embedded and sex-specific labor policies. and so that's when they start to come more and more over to the idea of the era and sex and

having a complete constitutional equality and then it takes off in world war ii, which i can get into that later. that's primarily because of the economic demands of the war brought more women to into the workforce, but then the labor laws come back around too because then that is also an argument for the production right? yes, actually great good. so what i'll just say real quick, i feel like i'm skipping ahead. but real quick and 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. so then this is undermine the idea that women are inherently incapable of performing the same tasks as men. so but back to what i was saying though with the as the emancipation is position is growing and the mid to late 1930s and taking off in the 1940s. you're seeing an expansion with its conservative and liberal variation. so you have conservative

emancipation or conservative era supporters like senator, edward burke of nebraska and what conservative emancipation has found in the pro-era position was arguments that aligned with their support for private enterprise and their criticisms of the government's involvement in the economy. and so they would often frame their arguments for the era around questions of a citizens right to economic self-fulfillment and that men and women should be able to participate in the marketplace in the same terms. and also there's a little bit well i should also say but conservative emancipation is their understanding rights in terms of negative rights. so seeing rights as being a way to shield individuals from government intrusion in their lives, and there's also a little bit of legal formalism playing out and some of these more conservative arguments for the era which is basically the idea that if sex isn't a valid reason to withhold the right to vote

then you can't have sex be a valid reason to withhold other rights like the right to serve on juries and their mind you have to have a consistency in the law. so i have this i mean because you you will say conservative support for the era. most people are what what are you talking about? right and so it is almost this sort of libertarian component right? maybe of yeah, yeah. great point and some of my students from my era class actually pointed that out too. so i think that's a very fair connection to make but then you're also having liberal emancipationists. so local eri supporters, and they're seen in the era more positive rights. so they're thinking about the er in terms of expanding the government's influence and and sharing 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 and how they're seeing what the era could do if passed both conservative and liberal emancipationists are still expressing their core support for the era in the same terms as men and women should be able to participate as citizens on the same terms and sex should not be legitimate legal classification in and of itself that men and women should have full equality. for the law, right? so now there's the other side that you're right here. so it's a little bit more confusing to talk about. this side because i think people have some preconceived notions of certain definitions. let me just take a civil water for a second. yeah, so there will be i mean you'll talk about this sort of the liberal component of the anti-era argument. yes. yes, so which is yeah, like what is it, right? yeah, a lot of people find it surprising that you have

individuals like eleanor roosevelt opposing the era and she was that i was fascinating to learn so she's very much what i call liberal protectionist. so the anti-era side i describe as protectionism or protectionist. and i should just point out for people who haven't read my book the way that i'm using the term protectionism in my study. i'm not referring exclusively to advocates a special labor legislation. so for those that don't know special labor legislation or special labor laws arose and the late 19th and early 20th centuries as a way to regulate women's working conditions and shield women from economic exploitation. so these were sex-specific labor laws that determined the jobs and tasks that women were allowed to perform right at regulated their work hours for prohibited them from working at night in certain instances. sometimes gave them minimum minimum wage laws, but these these regulations were really

based on the idea that all women were mothers or potential mothers and women's roles in the home necessity the extra special oversight of the government right now. so those so you have liberal-minded era opponents who love those labor laws and opposed the era as a threat to those labor laws and you also have conservative minded individuals who do not like labor laws, but they're still opposing the era so both conservative and liberal protectionists believed that women required special protection. they just differed and 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 those special labor laws. undermined husbands governing authority in the household now liberal protectionists believe that government reform efforts

could also serve as effective instruments of protection for women even with those differences though. you still have like i said before liberal and conservative protectionist. leaving that women needed special consideration and special protection because of their roles as mothers and caretakers at the home. so a shared desire to preserve the law's ability to treat men and women differently on account a sex after the passage of the 19th amendment and in the face of the developing equal rights campaign fueled the protectionist position. so alongside this desire protections believe that while women should be respected as right sparing citizens. they didn't want the law to categorically group women's rights with men's rights. so as i describe in my book protectionists conservative and liberal protectionists reasoned that actual sexual fairness meant securing two distinct, but equally valued sets of rights for men and women citizens.

so a key point here, is that the arguments against the era didn't simply revolve around the idea that women shouldn't have rights or that they should be denied their rights as full citizens and actuality era opponents insisted that they were the ones who were protecting women's rights, which protectionist the wording of that makes a lot of sense and that is also what we not dissimilar from what we see in the arguments against the era and the 70s right? exactly. yes. yes, so i do in my epilogue is suggests that it's a little bit more confusing than what i'm going to say right now, but a lot of the arguments that philosophy appealed to in the 1970s were arguments that were put forward in the original era conflict. so just one quick thing to note though what protectionists were doing is through the course of the original era conflict protections moved the argument against equal rights are equal

legal treatment a way from a pre-19th amendment emphasis on the reasons to exclude women from certain rights of citizenship towards a pope 19th amendment emphasis on the need to protect and develop a distinct citizenship for women that supposedly camp if it's on set of rights and for protectionists women's special rights. of things like being exempted from military service shielded from the ravages of capitalism and kept safe in their domestic roles. so again from the protectionist point of view. it wasn't that woman. should i have rights is that they should have their own set of rights. and so this is how you see the original era conflict transforming the nature of american citizenship away from what had been a single gender masculine model into a dual gender model with a separation of rights specific to men and women. i wanted to ask you i mean, you mentioned eleanor roosevelt which makes me think of the presidents right? and so it there can you talk a

little bit about presidential support or opposition to the era during that time period with fdr tr truman eisenhower's on the amendment and and give a little as to maybe why yes, okay. so the fdr administration with the exception of fdr's second vice president henry wallace. he actually supported the era but pretty much everyone else in the fdr administration did not because the fdr administration was really full of a lot of liberal protectionists and again the thinking for liberal protectionists, is that women needed sex specific labor laws because women had special needs that special treatment would recognize and fulfill and i just have a great. little antidote to add here when fdr had passed away alice. paul supposedly said the greatest threat to the amma has

now been removed. so so that just shows you how intensely opposed to the era the fdr administration was now truman though actually came out in support of the eri when he was a senator and then he reafford reaffirmed that support when he became president and a part of that the significance of that is it just shows how much the era had gained in popularity during the 1940s. but as i talk about i think it's in chapter 5 he started to back away from the amendment a lot through the course of his presidency, and that's because so many when the when the liberal were when the protection started to reassert themselves in the post for error, they really went out your true men and really said to him if you openly support the era we're gonna withdraw our support from you. so when i went to the presidential library truman's presidential library and i went through his some of the related

source materials some of his presidential advisors, so something to the effect of like it's political dynamite if either way you throw it it's gonna you know set off in your face, so he didn't he didn't come out and say he was against it, but he just decided to stop talking about it. so and then i eisenhower's saying something happens sound like a politician. i know so eisenhower's did a similar thing. so when eisenhower's elected era supporters thought that that would be a great thing for the era because they thought that he would align with the emancipation's position and he came out at a speech and i think madison square garden and said, you know, i support the era and so they were all excited about it. but then if you go through his presidential source materials as i did at the light at his library you see that he was saying i'm private things like i don't know what the era is, so so i mean his support for it was

pretty lackluster. and again, i think it was his secretary labor was very against the era for the same idea of women need special protection industrial realm and so his partly because of his secretary of labor eisenhower's like truman also backed away. he didn't come out and say he was against it. he just again was decided to be quite quiet about it. so it just shows that shows you how protectionists were really able to start their dominance in the post-war period right and so you in the book. it's a you know original conflict over the equal rights amendment 1920 to 1963 why 1963 what significant about that time? great question so let me just back up for a second. as i said in the 1920s there wasn't very much progress on the era. it's sort of various. yeah for various different reasons, and then there was a lot of your pro era momentum in

the mid to late 1930s and then really taking off in the 1940s and then after the war ended. certain societal developments create a ripe environment for protections to reassert themselves. i hope i'm not going too much into detail here, but the post-warri adjustment anxiety and that feeling that social stability would only come back if women left their jobs in the workforce and returned home allowed protections to you know, again reassert their dominance. but so i'm just going to go into a little bit detail here the idea that women left the workforce after the war and stayed home is actually kind of a myth and the immediate post world war ii period women did leave the workforce, but then they went back to work. so by the late night, i think it's like 1948 the numbers of women working in the workforce started to increase again quite dramatically to the point where in the 1950s the numbers of

women working outside. the home was higher than that during world war ii and so more women working outside. the home is aligning with the emancipation is insistence that women should be free to choose how to participate in life that women shouldn't just be confined to having primary duties in their home. so that's creating a lingering what i call like a lingering emancipationist and pulse. so the era is still floating around both political parties endorse again, 1948, and it's brought to the center for 1946 1950 and 1953, which is really quite annoying to protectionist. so in order to amp out the era they had to readjust their opposition strategy and it's not just being against the era but actually offer up their own alternative comprehensive measures and with these alternative comprehensive measures protections put forward the idea that the best thing for women would actually be a limited equality that recognize both men and women as having equal value in their citizenship of having a separation and rights because of a separation

and roles and so some of these alternative measures were things like the women's status bill the hayden writer. the equal pay act was actually largely an effort by liberal protectionist and then the biggest one is the president's commission on the status of women. so the president's commission on the status of women released its final report in 1963. so and that report is such a big deal when it comes to the era so esther peterson the big architect at the pcsw, which is the abbreviation for the president's commission on the status of women. she is a ardent era opponent and she believed that with this commission. they could make the era unnecessary and to offer up alternative ways for improving women's status and what she called a more balanced and practical approach towards removing the arbitrary discriminations on women and keeping what she believed to be equitable distinctions in place and so in the pcsw's final report.

it's so important as i describe in chapter 6 because it's 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 marine citizens without taking away the law's ability to treat women differently from men. and so what they did in the pcsw is offer up an alternative constitutional approach and to just summarize it quickly this alternative constitutional approach basically recommended that interested parties should put forward 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 distinct or arbitrary sex discrimination against women violated woman's rights as citizens under the amendment and

so the thinking was we could say that the era is not needed because women have the 14th amendment which will allow the court to draw clearer lines between arbitrary discriminations and supposedly equitable just sorry equitable distinctions so that you would find a limited constitutionally quality for men and women citizens. great. that was all super helpful. so we've covered sort of the arc and we have a couple of questions. i want to try to get to in our remaining minutes with you here. let's see. this is interesting question from aj who asks was there religious support of the era? religious support for them. well, that's a good question. i will it's easier to say there is religious opposition to the era as you definitely see in the 1970s opposition from religion, and you see it not to the same

extent as a 70s, but you see religious opposition and the original conflict but support i you know, i had to say i didn't see it actually clearly in the source materials that i was looking for that it's not to say it wasn't there. it's just not something i saw but that's a really good question. yeah, it's interesting. um, here's a question from sydney who asked up to what extent has race played a role in the era and your research. did you find any differing levels of support based on race? okay, so that's a very good question and it's not an easy question to answer and i actually have some notes here to make sure that i can answer the best to my ability okay, so like so many other areas and the original eri conflict the role of race you see overlaps and not a clear dividing line. so what i mean by that is you have black american supporting it and opposing it you have racist ideas permeating the

pro-era position and the anti-era position and you have support for civil rights legislation and the civil rights movement on both the anti and pro era positions. so 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 woman. she was a big era supporter by the late 1930s and her organization endorsed the era, but mary mcleod bethune, what who is a well-known civil rights activist during the 1930s and 1940s. she opposed the era and she was more aligned at the liberal. stance she was a sport the women's status bill, which was a protectionist measured to kind of stamp out the era and then you also have racist attitudes. like i said pervading both the pro and anti-position. so you have someone like florence kelly who was a social

reformer and a big era opponent testifying and congress in the 1920s saying something to the effect of if the era were to pass it would mean that black men and white women would have the same rights. so just a very racially a charged argument to try to flare up people's opinions, and then you also have people on the protection side like esther peterson and representative emanuel cellar who hated the era, but also we're 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 and their social and biological role in society and then on the pro era side you have people like mary church terrell and other individuals

like emma lutz the national women's party seen in the era that being a part of one large struggle for the equality of all persons, but then you also have on the on the pro era side individuals like representative howard smith who was a segregationist a white supremacist a racist, you know, not good person in many ways supporting the era because in his mind he believes that it would ensure that black americans didn't have an advantage of our white women and and his mind the era i meant and quality for white men and white women. so again with so many other areas in the original area conflict. you just see these blurred lines. yeah. sure. um, okay. so here's here's a question. i'm sure you never get dealing with you know, what what's next right? so it's a great question though from isabel. she says given the renewed recent renewed interest in the

era. we think russell hearings conversations around virginia being the 38 states ratify. of course, we all watch the miniseries mrs. america, and i've learned about that and then people taking it to the next level here. um, do you think we she says do you think that we're in the third conflict? ah, i'm so glad that she said that because that's something i talked about in our class. so yes, i do i do think we're in a third year i conflict because i am a historian. it's a lot easier for me to talk about things that have already happened. i'm much better analyzing things when the dust has settled, you know, the third year i conflict is still unfolding and i i'm 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 emancipation is core ideas influencing both

the pro and anti-eri positions, but there are also some developments. i mean because we have now such a more fluid understanding agender than what was in the original conflict and even what was in the 1970s, and i'm not sure how that's impacting the struggle. i just know it is but i haven't come to an opinion yet on exactly how it's impacting it. so i guess you know, let's wait a couple years and i'll probably have a better understanding of it once things have settled a little bit, but we're absolutely in a third era conflict right now. along those same lines faith is asking. whether what do you think the likelihood is of the era being ratified now? oh, that's a good question okay, so i will say that i had written a op-ed in the washington post and march 2021 basically kind of addressing that idea of the likelihood for the erie to pass.

so for those that don't know the era has recently gained the three state ratifications that it needed for to have the 38 states that's required 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'm not gonna 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 a potential for the dominant cultural consensus to align with the ethos of emancipationism. so the great social upheavals that we've all gone through with the covid-19 pandemic may have given era supporters the chance to to finally, you know, help push the er really good fully ratified. i'm not sure if that window of opportunity has closed yet or not, but it's quite possible that it's provide the extra push that er supporters have needed.

great. let's see. i think here's one more question has women's growing representation in congress and in state legislatures over the past century impacted the fate of the nra. that's great question. so do you think it's going at with more women in congress? there's more of a likely. i don't know. i mean he would that it would be passed or maybe you could say that maybe there is. is seen as less need for it because we are, you know have more representation. i don't know i guess either way. so i will say that in the original year i conflict there were a considerable amount of women congress members who oppose the era because of again this idea that they thought it was better for women to have their own set of rights and to have sex specific treatment. so just because you have an increase of women and congress

doesn't necessarily correlate to having an increased in support for the era. i think it really has to deal with having a difference in views of what men and women's roles are in society having a more fluid approach to it or more traditional approach to it. you know, sometimes i see floated around the idea of is the eri necessary now of the fact that there are so many more advancements. for women i mean there i definitely believe that there's still a lot of societal barriers against women. but yeah, i have seen people put forward the argument that there's nowhere near the same amount of legal discriminations against women as there was any original era conflict and that amendment goes after laws, right? i mean, it's yes to show amendment so i have seen people say well, but it really help with the the continued disadvantages against women which are more due to social practices and legalized sex

discrimination, but i will say if i can real quickly that what i see as the response to that from ei supporters today is something along the lines of the era is still necessary because it would provide a robust break from that legal tradition that had 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 right one of the big arguments, you know against the area was this issue of military service and women in combat and the draft etc is that because we now have you know women in the military has that argument been kind of removed from from the picture i would say so, okay. so if you go to the eagle form website, they still actually have this idea that the era would force women into combat on

the same level as men. so again, it gets back to this protectionist idea that women has special brides and one those rights is being exempted from combat do it or military service. but as you said and 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. so 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. and so i think what you are referring to is and 2013 the department of defense officially lifted the ban of women's serving in combat positions and then two years later the department of defense removed all gender-based restrictions to make women eligible for every military service role and then in teen i think it was a federal judge ruled that the only male requirement for the selective

service draft system was in constitutional and sexually discriminatory. it was a declaratory judgment so it didn't actually produce a court order. so the only male draft is still in place. but again when we see this greater movement towards gender equality in terms of civic obligations, i believe it does open up a pathway for greater gender equality in terms of rights. great. well, i think we're out of time. but thank you for taking us through this amazing arc and your book. i would encourage everybody to have the opportunity to check it out. so dr. dewal.

of the cosmosphere center. jim remar president ceo here