Don't forget we still have not Ratified the ERA

Yesterday when I heard that NOW was finally announcing their support of a Presidential candidate, Obama-Biden. NOW typically waits until later in the game announce who they are supporting, but they are still one of the most important ant influential PACs representing Women's voices.

I was reminded that the ERA was still pending, since 1972! This proposed yet unratified amendment to the US Constitution guarantees rights to all Americans regardless of sex. Yup, women still are not protected under the constitutional law as a matter of our gender. Its 2008 people! Why does this continue to be such a difficult amendment to pass, it has been reintroduced in Congress every year since 1982. This is not a partisan issue, this is an American issue, one that we cannot forgot. It has definitely been left to collect dust, the longest standing proposed amendment still outstanding with only 15 states needed to ratify.

Abigail Adams first broughtit up to her husband John in 1776, freedom for women, and he jsut laughed at there mere thougth of women being treated as equals to their husbands. Then in 1923, Alice Paul, introduced the first version of what woudl become the equal rights amendment; "Men and women shall have equal rights throughout the United States and every place subject to its jurisdiction."

So who is against the ERA?? Well a few theories are that women would be required to register for the draft just as men currently do, and would have to serve in combat just as men, and also that the ERA would also remove laws that specially protect women, such as labor laws in heavy industry. You know what, I am pretty sure even with ERA passing, the men that run our government will think of ways to keep us form comabt, even though participation of women in the military has reached almost 20%, plus the number of females working for private contractors. Considering all of those women are mostly being deployed overseas and having to take on more dangerous assignments, as gunners and protecting the convoys. My company, the largest defense contractor in the US (I know, i have heard it before....) has lost two employee's as contracotrs supporting the current war efforts. They both worked in Afghanistan, and were both women, single mothers. They were willing to sacrafice beign home with their kids to make good mone yto support their families.

Of course women are going to take on more and more roles that were more typically male-centric, but we want to and we can take on these more challenging and often dangerouswork. Or we don't have to, that is the wonderful thing of choice, we can do what we want!! But as long as we are willing to take on these roles, why can we not be protected under federal law? In another post I will get into the ecomomic inequalities in the workforce, but note here.

I will end with this thought, what if women no longer held positions of leadership, deferred to their husbands, lived at home until they got married, and basically had no opinions. What would this world look like, and would we all really want to live in it??