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We the Women: The Unstoppable Mother of the Equal Rights Amendment by Dr. Julie C. Suk

When I was growing up, the ERA was the topic at water coolers, supermarkets, town halls and doctor’s offices. It was a regular source of controversy in my high school classes and at our dinner table. My parents, who had three daughters, were firm proponents — even my more politically cautious and conservative mother. My father, a professional journalist, even made a vow to the president of the New York chapter of the National Organization for Women after she’d cornered him following an interview. She made him promise to fight for the ERA to see it passed on behalf of his girls. There was no question in our home — the U.S. Constitution needed to guarantee that women had equal rights. Equality of rights under the law shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any state on account of sex. Even my little sister, who was only seven in 1972 when the ERA was passed by Congress, understood this. 

Imagine our heartbreak when the ERA failed to make the artificially imposed deadline for ratification. By then, Phyllis Schlafly and her campaign of disinformation and rumor had poisoned the well and the men who made the laws were disinclined to vote for it in their home states. Who wanted to be in favor of sending mothers off to war or forcing boys and girls to use the same bathrooms? (Sound familiar?) It was easier to just let the amendment wither away. “Men in power have let the constitutional rights of women die, time and time again, without owning up to what they have done,” points out Dr. Julie C. Suk, author of We the Women: The Unstoppable Mothers of the Equal Rights Amendment (Skyhorse).

But this is a new day. In her fascinating look at the women who deserved to be enshrined as the mothers of our Constitution, Suk answers some pressing questions including, Whatever happened to the ERA? Is it still alive? 

The answer, I’m happy to report, is a qualified “yes.” 

On January 27, 2020 Virginia, thanks to the women who were voted in during the Blue Wave of 2018, became the 38th state to ratify the ERA. On February 13, 2020, the House of Representatives voted to remove time limits on the ratification of the ERA. Suk’s article, “An Equal Rights Amendment for the Twenty-First Century: Bringing Global Constitutionalism Home,” was cited in the report leading to the historic vote. But while these joyful accomplishments mean that the ERA has a pulse — it’s not exactly alive. The current presidential administration would like to see it dead and buried. Opponents point out that it’s long past the deadline and some states have even tried to de-ratify the ERA.

But Suk, a leading legal scholar, points out that it’s not as cut-and-dried as opponents would like us to believe. And more than that, she shows us why, in spite of the broadening of the 14th Amendment to include women and other laws that have been hard-won by champions such as Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, we still need the ERA. Protection for those who bear children continues to be a vulnerable point when it comes to equal rights under the law. The rights of sexual and gender minorities are also in danger. And women of color continue to bear the heaviest burdens when it comes to the denial of rights in today’s society.

While exploring questions that have been brought into sharp relief by the resistance and protest movements of the Trump administration, Suk also takes us on a fascinating journey to watch the work of the undaunted mothers of this amendment, starting with first lady Abigail Adams and her famous remark to husband, future President John Adams: “Do not put such unlimited power into the hands of the husbands. Remember, all men would be tyrants if they could. If particular care and attention is not paid to the ladies, we are determined to foment a rebellion, and will not hold ourselves bound by any laws in which we have no voice or representation.”

And what a rebellion it has been, requiring women to fight and claw and at times bleed to gain first passage of the 19th Amendment and voting rights, then the uphill battle to the ERA. At every turn, the women who took up the fight didn’t live to see its success. Susan B. Anthony didn’t live long enough to see passage of the 19th Amendment. Mary Church Terrell never saw the ERA pass Congress. U.S. Representatives Shirley Chisholm and Patsy Mink never saw the ratification of the ERA completed, nor witness Hillary Clinton or Kamala Harris run for the two highest offices in the land. 

Suk brings the hard-fought battles of our foremothers to life, including the women of color who are far too often overlooked in historical records. And today, exactly 100 years after the passage of the 19th Amendment, she gives us hope that true equality is possible. She reminds us, when we succeed, the ERA will be “the only piece of our nation’s fundamental law that was written by women after suffrage, adopted by women leading the way in Congress, given meaning by women lawyers and judges, and ratified by women lawmakers in legislatures of the 21st century.”

And my 98-year-old father, still an outspoken proponent for three daughters and three granddaughters, can see his promise fulfilled.

We the Women: The Unstoppable Mother of the Equal Rights Amendment by Dr. Julie C. Suk
Publish Date: 4/21/2020
Genre: Nonfiction
Author: Dr. Julie C. Suk
Publisher: Skyhorse
ISBN: 9781510755920
JeriAnn Geller

is a writer, editor and dabbler in arty stuff. A fourth-generation journalist (on her father’s side) and millionteenth-generation mother (on her mother’s side) she has written, edited, photographed and illustrated for newspapers, magazines, websites, blogs, videos and books. Known for her persnicketyness about grammar, she occasionally leaves in an error to delight people of similar inclination.

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