Category: ERA

ERA JUST GOT RATIFIED IN THE 38TH STATE!!

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We are thrilled to learn that on January 15th, 2020 the Virginia legislature has voted to ratify the Equal Rights Amendment!  It’s about time, Virginia, but thank you for finally acting on behalf of the women of the United States to end our second-class citizenship!

The Equal Rights Amendment reads as follows:

“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.”

Equal Means Equal and other groups were there to ensure that the Virginia legislature did not forget its promise to vote to ratify the ERA nearly 50 years after it was introduced in the U. S. Congress in 1972 and almost 100 years after it was first introduced in 1923 as the Lucretia Mott Amendment.  Many of us marched for the ERA and were disheartened when it did not reach the critical 38 states in 1982, but some of us never gave up the fight.  We wish to thank our sisters for their hard work and perseverance in pursuing ERA ratification!

Though there are still a few hurdles to its being enshrined in the Constitution as the 28th Amendment, it is way past time that women’s rights be fully recognized!  We will continue to fight until that happens!!

FIST on WBAI Update

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To listen to a podcast of the Joy of Resistance show on WBAI, please go to Joy of Resistance on WBAI, which will take you to the archive page, then click on the down arrow, select “Joy of Resistance.”  There are many great podcasts from which to choose. From there you can either listen to the podcast or download the MP3 file.

For the interview of Ann Menasche of FIST, go to the April 25, 2019 broadcast and click on the link.  Or you can go directly to the specific link FIST on WBAI to just listen.  The interview with Ann starts at 38:13 minutes into the show.

FIST on WBAI Radio!

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Ann Menasche of Feminists in Struggle (FIST) will be interviewed by Fran Luck on the Joy of Resistance show on WBAI Radio Thursday, April 25, 2019 at 7-8 pm EDT (4-5 pm PDT).

Ann is a Civil Rights lawyer and has been a radical feminist and a socialist activist for her entire adult life. She organized a lesbian feminist group and mass marches in defense of abortion rights in the 1980’s in San Francisco and led a coalition for marriage equality. Recently she became a founding member of a new national radical feminist organization: Feminists in Struggle–or FIST–which was launched on International Women’s Day, March 8, 2019.  The interview will explore why a number of women across the country saw the need for a new feminist organization–including the fact that FIST, unlike other feminist organizations that are gender critical, does not believe in making alliances with the right wing and sees its positions as belonging in a revitalized Left. Its issues also include reproductive freedom, passing the ERA, and an end to men’s violence against women–as well as the abolition of gender.

You can tune in at: Joy of Resistance at WBAI. The show will also feature Taina Bian Aime of the Coalition Against Trafficking in Women–CATW) on the fight against legalization of commercial surrogacy in New York State.  There may be an opportunity to call in during the show.

For more information, go to:Joy of Resistance Info

An International Women’s Day Message from Feminists in Struggle

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This International Women’s Day, March 8, 2019 marks the launch of a unique national grassroots network of radical feminists, Feminists in Struggle.  We are unique because we are member-run, member-funded, and with a vision that draws inspiration from generations of feminists that came before us.  Our foremothers a century ago won the vote and the eight hour work day. Women in the Second Wave won abortion rights and got very close to winning the Equal Rights Amendment.  Feminists succeeded in opening up higher education and many jobs and professions previously closed to women. These were long, hard struggles with many obstacles along the way.  But they persisted and they won.

It is time to do it once again.  We females are half the population.  It is time to exercise our collective muscle–the power of sisterhood–to roll back the attacks from multiple quarters that aim to reverse the gains we won during the past half century.   It is time to rebuild a movement for female liberation that will defend our right to our own spaces, programs, and organizations, fight for access to legal abortion, defend lesbian rights, preserve laws prohibiting sex discrimination,  finish the job of winning the ERA, and end violence against women.  We need a movement that will go all the way this time, and dismantle the patriarchal male-supremacist system that oppresses us.  We can’t be erased if we organize and speak out together as one voice!

If you believe like we do that the time for political organizing and collective action is NOW and you want to make herstory together fighting to defend the rights of women and girls, PLEASE JOIN US! As suffragist Christabel Pankhurst declared, “Remember the dignity of your womanhood. Do not appeal, do not beg, do not grovel. Take courage, join hands, stand beside us, fight with us.”

The Fight for Women’s Rights

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The first women’s rights convention in the U.S. called by women met in Seneca Falls, New York in 1848, over 170 years ago now. The five women who organized the convention, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Lucretia Mott, Mary McClintock, Martha Coffin Wright, and Jane Hunt were all abolitionists. Their founding document, The Declaration of Sentiments, outlined 19 “abuses and usurpations” cemented in law, including the inability to own property or vote, and asserted the equality of women in private and public life including politics, education, and religion.

The woman’s suffrage movement, which focused on securing the right to vote, required women’s unflagging commitment and the endurance of hardship and abuse before women were granted the right to vote by the 19th amendment in 1920, 72 years after the convention in New York.

The Equal Rights Amendment, written by Alice Paul and originally called the Lucretia Mott Amendment, was first introduced into Congress in 1923 but was never passed. Paul rewrote it in 1943 to read: “Equality of rights under the law shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any state on account of sex,” and it was finally passed in 1972 but has still has not been ratified by 3/4 of the states. Thirty eight states are needed to ratify the amendment so it will become part of the U.S. Constitution, and only 35 had done so up until 2017 when Nevada finally ratified it, and 2018 when Illinois finally did, leaving 1 STATE LEFT needed to ratify! The states that still need to ratify the ERA are listed below. Help us get the ERA ratified by their state legislatures!

  • Alabama
  • Arizona
  • Arkansas
  • Florida
  • Georgia
  • Louisiana
  • Mississippi
  • Missouri
  • North Carolina
  • Oklahoma
  • South Carolina
  • Virginia
  • Utah