In class, talking about our homework which was to calculate if there was a change in the USA gender gap in the 70s. Turns out the gender gap decreased by about 26% in the time frame we studied. The professor explained that during this time period there was a real push for equality in the states. He went on to say that there was even an equal rights amendment that would have made it illegal to discriminate in any way based on gender, but, amazingly, it was not ratified.
I'm the only American in the class of 16. And America #1, so I pipe up:
"Yeah, it was because of abortion."
The professor stares at me with a blank expression. I continue:
"There was something about abortion in the amendment that nobody could agree on."
He immediately retorts, "No, it was passed in congress, but it ran into trouble with the states. Not enough states would ratify it because they didn't think it was necessary or good to enshrine gender equality in the constitution. They didn't believe it was necessary."
Burned! A British professor knew more about recent American history than me!
I looked it up on wikipedia and basically he's right. It didn't get the requisite 38 states to ratify it because of the issue he pointed out, but also over concerns about the selective service and other issues. Later he offered an olive branch to me on a different question, saying I was probably better to ask about American Union law than he was (which is, unfortunately, not true).
But I swear, there was something in that era that got derailed by a disagreement about abortion. Maybe something with the universal declaration of human rights? An Equal Rights Act? Can anyone help me out here?
One person from my class pointed out that there's an episode of the west wing that seems to be close to what I'm thinking. I hope I haven't substituted fiction for history.
We set this up to keep in touch with people we may not see for awhile. So keep in touch. We'll try to keep this thing interesting and updated frequently.
Wednesday, March 07, 2007
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1 comment:
CEDAW, the Convention on the Elimination of all forms of Discrimination Against Women. It has a clause protecting a womnan's right to choose if and when to reproduce. Also the spacing of pregnancies. Even if you object to the right of a woman to be the boss of her uterus, the rest of the convention is really good and worthy but no one is willing to bring it up again in Congress and it would probably fail again for the same reason. The US is the only industrialized country not to have acceeded to that convention. But, while most countries have signed it, they clearly don't enforce it anywhere in the world in an appreciable way.
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