While I respect and admire both Gloria Steinem and Elinor Smeal more than I can say, I find myself in a bit of disagreement with them both and Ms. Steinem in particular, in their assessment that Mrs. America, the TV series about the failed attempt to pass the Equal Rights Amendment in the 1970’s, is bad for women.
While they rightfully say that there was much more to the attempt to torpedo the amendment than the obvious struggle between feminist advocates like Gloria Steinem and conservative opponents like Phyllis Schlafly, that fight was a significant part of the reason that the ERA still hasn’t been passed. If women had actually been united in what should have been a no-brainer effort to secure equal rights for us on every level of life, the corporate interests who were truly behind the fight to deny us might not have been so successful.
Contrary to Ms. Steinem’s assertion that the series falsely implies that women act against their own best interests, I think history, both distant and recent, shows that we tend to do exactly that. I was a college student when the word “feminist” first rose up to describe a woman who believed she should be judged by her personhood not her gender, and yes, it was men who immediately tacked on the “man-hating, ugly, excessive facial hair, non-leg shaving, bitter, etc.” descriptions to the word; however, it can’t be denied that women immediately bought into those descriptions and for every one of us who embraced the concept of feminism, there were 10 who ran away from it as fast as they could.
And the irony should not be lost that Phyllis Schlafly, the most visible and ardent opponent of the ERA, the woman who crossed the country speaking out against it, stridently asserting that it was a woman’s place to follow a man, to be the perfect helpmeet and make sure the home fires were burning and the children were clean, dressed and well-fed each day, didn’t do any of those things. She led a feminist life. She was rarely home, she was head of multiple efforts involving multiple issues, almost all anti-women, she wrote a number of books and she ran, with an iron fist, Eagle Forum, a powerful conservative organization that her children finally wrestled out of her control shortly before she died at the age of 92. Show of hands, who here has ever heard of Mr. Schlafly?
Yet, there she and her many followers were, allowing themselves to be used by sinister corporate interests, elevated to be the face of denying women equal rights and why? So they wouldn’t have to give up having their cigarettes lit, their car doors opened, their chairs held out or men standing when they entered the room. Pretty cheap payoff for betraying the cause of equality and if truth be told, we haven’t come very far since then.
Oh sure, we’re now seen in all walks of life: politics, law, medicine, boardrooms, law enforcement, firefighting, constructions sites, sports arenas, academia, etc., but there are still far fewer of us in those places and we’re paid significantly less. As we speak, Republican men throughout the country are trying to roll our rights back to when Phyllis Schlafly walked the earth, and Republican women are voting for them even though it’s against their financial, health and families’ best interests to do so. Don’t forget that more white women voted for Donald Trump, the poster child for misogynist pigs, than Hillary Clinton and the reasons they gave were every bit as sexist as the men’s.
So yeah, Ms. Steinem and Ms. Smeal are right in saying that the 1970’s fight to pass the ERA was much more than a catfight between women, but is Mrs. America bad for American women to see? I don’t think so. I think we need to take a good hard look at how we continue to undermine each other and how willing we are to hold each other back. I think young women in particular need to see how hard we fought, sometimes against each other, to get where we are now and how easily it could be taken away if we don’t stand together. Mostly, we need to understand that whatever rights we have don’t mean squat if all women don’t have those rights.
