ERA: An Idea Whose Time Has Passed
The stupidity of this is astounding.
From PRNewsWire.com, which lists the source as the Office of Senator Ted Kennedy.
Michelle Malkin provides a link to Phyllis Schlafly's short history of the ERA. Worth reading. It would be helpful if the buffoons engaging in this monumental waste of time (and taxpayer dollars) read it, just to remind themselves why it never passed in the first place, and why every time it came up for a popular vote, the voters emphatically turned it down.
It's because it's idiotic. An amendment to the Constitution of the United States that makes it illegal to charge women lower insurance premiums because they have fewer accidents and tend to live longer than men do. And amendment to the Constitution of the United States that makes it mandatory for women to register for the draft and mandatory for women to serve in frontline combat units if selected to do so (where someone's life may depend on their buddy's ability to shoulder not only their own gear but a 200-lb wounded person with all his gear and still be able to run).
Women no longer have to face the barriers that we used to face. The primary reason for this is demographics.
Demographics. Plain old under-nobody's-control-but-God's demographics. Not the Democratic Party, not NOW, not ERA. Demographics.
Back in 1989 the Air Force released a study called "Global 2000" that published, among other things, the information that demographics in the United States was shifting. At that time, the Air Force was (as many large corporations do) trying to project where their workforce was coming from. This makes a difference in training programs, at least. How can you be ready to train and maintain your workforce if you don't know where they're coming from, their educational level, their cultural background?
One finding: By the year 2000 over 60% of the newcomers to the workforce would be female. Eighty-five percent would be female, ethnic minorities, and/or immigrants.
When I began attending college at Texas A&M University, women had only been attending for 3 years. Prior to 1971, a woman had to be related to a faculty member (wife, daughter, niece). In 1971 the university was strong-armed into accepting women by the threat of losing federal funds (the same threat that resulted three years later in women being admitted to the Corps of Cadets and the same threat that opened the military academies a year after that to women and the same threat that opened the Citadel twenty years later to women). In 1971 women had only to meet the same criteria the men had to (SAT scores, academic record, etc.). Prior to that, for 95 years, Texas A&M was all-male.
One of our military advisors when I was in the Corps of Cadets was one of the first women to attend, and she had stories... Like the Corps of Cadets and their quaint way of welcoming women to the campus. It was a fish (freshman) "privilege" (meaning it was mandatory) to spit at the heels of any woman on campus.
I suspect it had a deleterious effect on their ability to get dates, but then the Corps of Cadets was not known for being forward-thinking. Nor was the faculty or the alumni. And I know this personally because I was one of the first women to enter the Corps of Cadets when I began my freshman year there in September 1974.
The barriers were very real. I could tell you stories, too.
The thing is, that was then and this is now. Not that women don't run into male chauvinist buffoonery in these United States, but it isn't nearly as prevalent as it used to be (and sometimes it hides; it exists but it's much more subtle).
Women are filling jobs that were "traditionally" held by men for so long that it no longer incites comments (most of the time). In no small part this is simple necessity. Women are in the work force now in such large numbers that if corporations (even the military type) don't fill their jobs with female-type people, the jobs go unfilled. And that just won't work.
And it's too late to go back. Even if someone wanted to turn the clock back and make all these women go back to their kitchens and raise their kids at home, it would be an economic disaster. It's too late. Ain't gonna happen. Women are where they are because they chose to be there.
And people -- that was the idea. We put up with a lot of amazingly boorish, cruel, even criminal behavior just so the women who came after us didn't have to. That women should be doing whatever they want to do, whatever they're qualified to do, without garnering so much as a second glance, was the objective. That was the friggin' point!!!
Sorry for getting so emphatic, but it flabbergasts me that anyone should have to explain that, especially to these Democrats, who claim to be pro-woman and pro-equality and keep proving, over and over, through their actions that they have never once understood the "cause" they claimed to support.
President Summers of Harvard was right -- if women aren't represented in large numbers in certain fields of endeavor, perhaps it is only because that field didn't interest the women at that time. Maybe next year it will be different. Maybe it stays the same. But they weren't being prevented from joining the programs -- they just chose to sign up elsewhere.
When people have choices, they use them. Even if the so-called "Progressives" don't understand their choices.
The entire four years I was at Texas A&M, I ran into people on a daily basis, including Corps members, other students (female, too, which was interesting), and faculty members never ever understood why we wanted to be in the Corps. [See Note below.]
Lots of people don't understand a woman wanting to stay home and raise her children rather than holding down a full time job working outside the home.
It's a choice. We worked hard and put up with a lot of crap to make sure those choices were made available.
Even if the Democrats don't "get it."
The ERA was never a good idea. It's a remarkably moronic one now.
[Note: And when I went on active duty, I was placed in a career field that had just been opened to women. I've earned my stripes as a feminist, before a lot of these women who have hijacked that term were even born.]
From PRNewsWire.com, which lists the source as the Office of Senator Ted Kennedy.
Senator Ted Kennedy (D-MA), Senator Barbara Boxer (D-CA), Rep. Carolyn Maloney (D-NY), Rep. Jerrold Nadler (D-NY), and Ellie Smeal, President of the Feminist Majority and strong leader on the fight for women's equality will announce the reintroduction of the Women's Equality Amendment on Tuesday. An amendment to guarantee equal rights to women has still never been ratified and added to the U.S. Constitution, even though it was first introduced in 1923. The ERA passed Congress in 1972 but lapsed in 1982 when it fell three states short of ratification. This year, there are more than 190 original co-sponsors of the Women's Equality Amendment (ERA).
Michelle Malkin provides a link to Phyllis Schlafly's short history of the ERA. Worth reading. It would be helpful if the buffoons engaging in this monumental waste of time (and taxpayer dollars) read it, just to remind themselves why it never passed in the first place, and why every time it came up for a popular vote, the voters emphatically turned it down.
It's because it's idiotic. An amendment to the Constitution of the United States that makes it illegal to charge women lower insurance premiums because they have fewer accidents and tend to live longer than men do. And amendment to the Constitution of the United States that makes it mandatory for women to register for the draft and mandatory for women to serve in frontline combat units if selected to do so (where someone's life may depend on their buddy's ability to shoulder not only their own gear but a 200-lb wounded person with all his gear and still be able to run).
Women no longer have to face the barriers that we used to face. The primary reason for this is demographics.
Demographics. Plain old under-nobody's-control-but-God's demographics. Not the Democratic Party, not NOW, not ERA. Demographics.
Back in 1989 the Air Force released a study called "Global 2000" that published, among other things, the information that demographics in the United States was shifting. At that time, the Air Force was (as many large corporations do) trying to project where their workforce was coming from. This makes a difference in training programs, at least. How can you be ready to train and maintain your workforce if you don't know where they're coming from, their educational level, their cultural background?
One finding: By the year 2000 over 60% of the newcomers to the workforce would be female. Eighty-five percent would be female, ethnic minorities, and/or immigrants.
When I began attending college at Texas A&M University, women had only been attending for 3 years. Prior to 1971, a woman had to be related to a faculty member (wife, daughter, niece). In 1971 the university was strong-armed into accepting women by the threat of losing federal funds (the same threat that resulted three years later in women being admitted to the Corps of Cadets and the same threat that opened the military academies a year after that to women and the same threat that opened the Citadel twenty years later to women). In 1971 women had only to meet the same criteria the men had to (SAT scores, academic record, etc.). Prior to that, for 95 years, Texas A&M was all-male.
One of our military advisors when I was in the Corps of Cadets was one of the first women to attend, and she had stories... Like the Corps of Cadets and their quaint way of welcoming women to the campus. It was a fish (freshman) "privilege" (meaning it was mandatory) to spit at the heels of any woman on campus.
I suspect it had a deleterious effect on their ability to get dates, but then the Corps of Cadets was not known for being forward-thinking. Nor was the faculty or the alumni. And I know this personally because I was one of the first women to enter the Corps of Cadets when I began my freshman year there in September 1974.
The barriers were very real. I could tell you stories, too.
The thing is, that was then and this is now. Not that women don't run into male chauvinist buffoonery in these United States, but it isn't nearly as prevalent as it used to be (and sometimes it hides; it exists but it's much more subtle).
Women are filling jobs that were "traditionally" held by men for so long that it no longer incites comments (most of the time). In no small part this is simple necessity. Women are in the work force now in such large numbers that if corporations (even the military type) don't fill their jobs with female-type people, the jobs go unfilled. And that just won't work.
And it's too late to go back. Even if someone wanted to turn the clock back and make all these women go back to their kitchens and raise their kids at home, it would be an economic disaster. It's too late. Ain't gonna happen. Women are where they are because they chose to be there.
And people -- that was the idea. We put up with a lot of amazingly boorish, cruel, even criminal behavior just so the women who came after us didn't have to. That women should be doing whatever they want to do, whatever they're qualified to do, without garnering so much as a second glance, was the objective. That was the friggin' point!!!
Sorry for getting so emphatic, but it flabbergasts me that anyone should have to explain that, especially to these Democrats, who claim to be pro-woman and pro-equality and keep proving, over and over, through their actions that they have never once understood the "cause" they claimed to support.
President Summers of Harvard was right -- if women aren't represented in large numbers in certain fields of endeavor, perhaps it is only because that field didn't interest the women at that time. Maybe next year it will be different. Maybe it stays the same. But they weren't being prevented from joining the programs -- they just chose to sign up elsewhere.
When people have choices, they use them. Even if the so-called "Progressives" don't understand their choices.
The entire four years I was at Texas A&M, I ran into people on a daily basis, including Corps members, other students (female, too, which was interesting), and faculty members never ever understood why we wanted to be in the Corps. [See Note below.]
Lots of people don't understand a woman wanting to stay home and raise her children rather than holding down a full time job working outside the home.
It's a choice. We worked hard and put up with a lot of crap to make sure those choices were made available.
Even if the Democrats don't "get it."
The ERA was never a good idea. It's a remarkably moronic one now.
[Note: And when I went on active duty, I was placed in a career field that had just been opened to women. I've earned my stripes as a feminist, before a lot of these women who have hijacked that term were even born.]
Labels: Politics
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