                                  T H E

                               Z E P H Y R

                      __     M A G A Z I N E
                     {__]++++++++++++++++++++++++++[]
                     Issue #58                7-03-88

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                        Editor - Gene B. Williams

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                                (c) 1988

    THIS ISSUE:

       What better topic could there be for the Fourth of July weekend
    but one that deals with personal freedom?
       Leigh has met the challenge I offered. (Hmmm. No one else thus
    challenged came forward.) She wrote an article for us on the
    badly misunderstood Equal Rights Amendment.

                       THE EQUAL RIGHTS AMENDMENT

                                   by

                                 Leigh

     Since I lived overseas during the great ERA battle I always wondered
     why so many people, both men and women, found the proposed amendment so
     threatening. First I decided it must be the way the amendment was
     written, but after reading it I was still mystified.

                         THE EQUAL RIGHTS AMENDMENT

                           Proposed Amendment XXVII
                   (Proposed by Congress on March 22, 1972)

           Section 1. Equality of rights under the law shall not
             be denied or abridged by the United States or by any
             State on account of sex.

           Section 2. The Congress shall have the power to enforce,
             by appropriate legislation, the provisions of this
             article.

           Section 3. This amendment shall take effect two years
             after the date of ratification.

      It appeared to be a very straight forward law to me.  There was
    nothing in it that seemed particularlly threatening. Next I decided it
    must have been the remarks of the people supporting it that were the
    problem.

       Representative Barbara Jordan, in a written statement to the
    Subcommittee on Civil and Constutional Rights said:

       "The Equal Rights Amendment is a mandate for change. It is a
       standard by which to measure our future legal and social
       constructs. It is about equality and freedom and the pursuit
       of happiness."

       Again, nothing too threatening in that. That left only the way the
    Senate planned to interpret it. But the Senate report said:

       "The basic principle on which the Amendment rests may be stated
       shortly: sex should not be a factor in determining the legal
       rights of men or women.  The Amendment thus recognizes the
       fundamental dignity and individuality of each human being. The
       Amendment will affect only governmental action; the private
       actions and the private relationships of men and women are
       unaffected."

     And, that it:

       "must deal with the individual attributes of the particular
       person and not with stereotypes.... based on sex."

       After this I was pretty lost. Why should people be bothered by
    a law that simply stated that everyone, under the law, should be
    treated the same regardless of sex? Of course, there are those
    who say there is no need for another constitutional amendment,
    that the 13th, 15th, 19th and 26th amendments took care of all
    discrimination. However, since there were, at the time of the
    ERA's passage, over 800 sections of the U.S. Code that contained
    examples of sex bias and prior to 1971 the Supreme Court had
    upheld laws that denied women the right to serve on juries and
    barred them from occupations ranging from attorney to bartender.
       I had also heard all the anti-ERA rhetoric that stated
    ratification would mean co-ed bathrooms and other similarly
    outrageous claims, but since 14 states have added equal rights
    amendments to their state constitutions without mandating such
    changes I quickly dismissed these claims as ludicrous.
    123
      There were those who said that the ERA would discriminate against
    men but since one of the first Court decisions after passage of the
    ERA rendered unconstitutional a statute that granted automatic fringe
    benefits to the wives of servicemen but required the husbands of
    servicewomen to prove dependency it appeared obvious to me that
    the benefits of ERA would cut both ways.

                             THE LABOR FORCE

       No one can deny that much progress has been made by women who
    work outside the home but the fact remains that in 1956 a woman's
    average earnings were 63% of a man's but by 1976 it had fallen to
    60%. The jobs most available to women still fall in the traditional
    "woman's" areas of clerical and service work. The laws which
    discriminate against women were, for the most part, enacted in
    the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Though called
    "protective" they have effectively made it difficult for women to
    obtain the desirable jobs for which they are qualified. Research
    reveals that these laws were based not only on stereotypical beliefs
    concerning a woman's "weak physical condition" and secondary place
    in the labor market but also the desire of men to reduce competition
    for higher paying jobs. As a result, as recently as 1976, a woman
    with 4 years of college was earning about the same salary as a man
    with an 8th grade education. This added to the fact that by 1974
    over half the women aged 18-64 worked fulltime, almost half of all
    married women worked full time and 1 of 10 women was head of a
    household clearly shows the need to eliminate the discriminatory
    laws.
       Basically there are three types of labor laws affecting women,
    1) those which exclude them from certain jobs, 2) laws concerning
    the number of hours they can work and 3) laws providing so called
    benefits such as minimum wage and rest periods. While the Civil
    Rights Act of 1964 has helped to challenge and change some of the
    restrictive laws many still remain on the books.
       As of 1977 there were 22 states with laws still in effect that
    contained sex-discriminatory prohibitions concerning barbers and
    cosmetologists.
       Most comommonly these laws prohibit female cosmetologists from
    serving male customers while male barbers can serve either male or
    female customers.  Three states still had laws restricting the
    number of hours a woman could work overtime and five states had
    laws that applied minimum wage benefits to women only.

     WHAT THE ERA WOULD DO

       The ERA would give the same benefits, rights and protections
    to all workers, both male and female. Laws would be rendered
    "gender neutral" so that laws which offered workers protection
    would offer the same protection whether the worker was male or
    female. Laws concerning worker rights and benefits also would be
    applied equally to both men and women.

                              CRIMINAL LAW

        Many of today's criminal laws discriminate against women, both
    as victim and offender. Legal defense as well as definitions of
    criminal behaviour can be based on sex. A good example of that
    is the so called "unwritten law" which allows a man finding his
    wife in an adulterous situation to kill her and still be charged
    only with manslaughter rather than murder while no such defense
    is available to a woman in the same situation. Most states do not
    allow for a charge of forcible rape to be brought against a husband
    by his wife no matter what the circumstances or the amount of force
    involved. And from a man's point, many states have no provisions in
    their laws for the male victim of sexual assault.
       Prostitution has always been considered a "woman's" crime and
    many laws covering it ignore both male patrons and male prostitutes.
    In juvenile law, girls have traditionally been institutionalized
    for less serious conduct and have remained incarcerated for longer
    periods of time. Even in prison the discrimination continues since
    female prisoners receive less job training.

     WHAT THE ERA WOULD DO

       The ERA would require that all laws be "neutral" in regard
    to sex. The same crime, committed by a man or a woman, would
    require the same punishment. And victims of crime, male or
    female, would have the same protections and rights.

                               FAMILY LAW

        Perhaps the most emotional issue surrounding the ERA is its
    perceived impact on the family. It was assumed that the traditional
    homemaker would lose her protections yet much of the "protection"
    was simply myth. Since US law has its roots (basis?) in English
    common law a woman has traditionally been treated as a second
    class citizen when it comes to laws concerning marriage and its
    associated property rights. While many laws have been changed
    over the years there are still laws in effect that:

     1. state that a home belongs to the husband, even if the wife
    paid for it.

     2. give the husband the right to manage community property
    without the wife's consent, even if she paid for it.

     3. say a woman cannot sue a third party who has injured her
    husband and deprived her of his services, though a husband can
    sue under similar circumstances.

     4. give no value to the contributions of a full time homemaker.

     5. assume that all property aquired during a marriage is the
    property of the husband unless the woman can prove she paid
    for it.

        This last can best be exemplified by the Nebraska farm couple
    who worked the land together for 33 years. After her husband's
    death and despite the fact of a joint title, in the eyes of the
    governement the farm belonged entirely to the husband. Unless
    the wife could prove she had helped to pay for the purchase of
    the farm or the improvements she was liable for an inheritance
    tax, yet if she had died first her husband would have faced no
    such tax.
       Even under Social Security a fulltime homemaker has no
    independent right to benefits. A woman under 50 who is widowed,
    even if she is disabled and unable to work, will not receive
    benefits unless she has minor or disabled children. And since
    the program does not attach any economic value to her contributions
    in the home, if she becomes disabled her dependents have no rights
    to benefits even though her services are lost to them.
       Clearly then, the ratification of the ERA would have benefited,
    not only women who work outside the home, but all full time
    homemakers, male or female, by assigning a value to their
    contribution to the family.
       It has also been assumed by many that the ratification of the
    ERA would mean an end to laws requiring men to support dependent
    wives and children and it is in this area that the opponents of
    the ERA point to the "special status" of women under the law that
    would be lost. Research shows though, that in none of the states
    with ERA provisions have these laws been repealed and none have
    been rewritten to require a "fifty-fifty" division of financial
    responsibility, either during or after a marriage. Legal standards
    in these states now look at the needs and capabilities of each
    family member, not their gender.
       In Texas, for instance, the law now states that "each spouse
    has the duty to support his or her minor children" and the Texas
    Court has ruled that the ERA "does not require that the parents
    make mathematically equal contributions for the support of their
    children. It only provides that each parent has the equal
    obligation, in accordance with his or her ability, to contribute
    money or services which are necessary for the support and
    maintenance of his or her children."
       The Pennsylvannia Supreme Court also ruled that the equal
    obligation of men and women does not just mean financially and
    that direct financial contribution to a child's support was not
    required from a mother who felt it necessary to stay home with
    her young children. In that case the value of her services to
    the children at home were deemed of equal value to the father's
    financial contributions.
       Of course, these laws also make it possible for women to be
    obligated to pay either child support or alimony. Such cases have
    been widely reported by the press but when the distortions are
    set aside the fairness of the court decision has been revealed.
       Much of the rhetoric in this area concerned the Pennsylvannia
    case of Buonocore vs. Buonocore in which the non-custodial mother
    was charged with child support. However the facts of the case show
    that Mrs. Buonocore had moved out of the family home leaving her
    husband with their two minor children. After showing no interest
    in having custody of the children or contributing towards their
    support her husband sued her for child support. At that time she
    was earning a weekly salary equal to that of her husband who was
    incurring the expenses of raising two small children. The Court
    ruled that Mrs. Buonocore should pay child support in the amount
    of $30 a week, hardly a newsworthy event had she been a man.
       The Maryland case of Tignor vs. Tignor is another favorite of
    opponents of the ERA. In this case, Mrs. Tignor was required to
    pay support to her husband after the marriage was dissolved.
    However, the facts of the case reveal that Mr. Tignor was blind
    and had relied on his wife's support during the marriage. This
    clearly shows the fairness of the ERA and its "mutual
    responsibility" doctrine.

       In conclusion, it appears to me that there is a real need for
    enactment of the ERA. Women continue to be disadvantaged by laws
    that are gender based. In the work place they still face an earning
    gap wider now than it was in 1956. As wives they can be and often
    are denied an equal role in marriage. And they face a criminal
    court system that all too often judges them by their sex alone.
    The ERA would have provided a remedy for these inequities as well
    as providing equal rights and protections under the law for both
    men and women.

    Sources:

     Statement on the Equal Rights Amendment - United States Commission
     on Civil Rights

     Women's Rights and the Law - Barbara Brown, Ann E. Freedman,
     Harriet N. Katz, Alice M. Price with Hazel Greenberg

    UNTIL NEXT TIME

       Simple? Straightforward?
       Makes you think, doesn't it? (Or it should.)
       Read the amendment itself and you're almost certain to wonder
    just what the big hoo-haa is all about. Ahh, but if it's all as
    simple as it seems, why the continuing resistance?
       Think about it.
       And share your thoughts here on the board.

       Thanks, Leigh, for a very interesting article.
       Now - who's next? Anyone else care to contribute to the magazine?

Zephyr Magazine is © Gene Williams. All rights reserved.