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Equal Rights Amendment Clearly, pro ERA spokesperson Alice Paul presented the most persuasive winning case for equal rights. Alice Paul was highly educated with an undergraduate degree in biology from Swarthmore, and M. A. and Phd in sociology and economics from the University of Pennsylvania with law degrees from Washington College and American University. She was a member of the Executive Board of Student Government and named Ivy Poetess.
She was a commencement speaker. Her strongly held belief was in the equality of women. Her artful rhetoric guide her audience. She devoted her lifetime and her law background to her cause. Her words had face value and implicit value, which set a mood, tone, and feeling in the visual imagery of the message.
She intensified the message of the movement and constantly worked to gain compliance with her point of view. She was jeered when she spoke of womens suffrage with a British faction of the suffragettes, whose motto was deeds, not words! She was placed in a rat-infested prison by judges who thought she was insane. Justice Bradley declared, "Man is, or should be, women's protector and defender... The paramount destiny and mission of women is to fulfill the noble and benign offices of wife and mother. This is the law of the Creator. " Alice Paul traveled to Europe where the British suffragist movement was through the Women's Social and Political Union (WSPU), founded by Emmeline Pankhurst in 1903.
Primarily supported by elite women, the WSPU advocated civil disobedience, which got its members jailed. Alice Paul broke 48 windows herself. The incarcerated suffragettes received immediate publicity and the movement gained world-wide attention. It was outrageous that women were incarcerated for asserting equal status with men. Prison officials removed Paul to a sanitarium in hopes of getting her declared insane when news of the prison conditions and hunger strikes became known. The press, some politicians, and the public began demanding the womens release.
Sympathy for the prisoners brought many to support the cause of women's suffrage. The womans movement had divided into two factions, those who wanted equality to males and those who relished the advances won in the working conditions of women that the new amendment would overrule. In 1913, Alice Paul and a few others founded the Congressional Union of Woman Suffrage (CUWS) as an American version of the WSPU. Alice Paul was capable of appealing to reason and emotions, and had the power to bring about change in behavior, attitude, and belief (Rhodes, 2003). She was able to refrain, reorganizing the existing information with negotiation skills that brought about change. The CUWS engaged in civil disobedience, chaining themselves to the White House fence, and when they were jailed, went on hunger strikes.
While a student at the University of Pennsylvania, she joined the National American Women's Suffrage Association (NAWSA). She was quickly appointed as head of the Congressional Committee in charge of working for a federal suffrage amendment, a secondary goal to the NAWSA leadership. In 1912, Alice Paul and two friends, Lucy Burns and Crystal Eastman, headed to Washington, D. C. to organize for suffrage. With little funding but in true Pankhurst style, Paul and Burns organized a publicity event to gain maximum national attention.
They formed an elaborate massive parade of women to march up Pennsylvania Avenue to coincide with Woodrow Wilson's presidential inauguration, but the scene turned ugly, however, when scores of male onlookers attacked the suffragists, first with insults and obscenities, and then with physical violence. In 1916 Paul and her allies launched the National Woman's Party (NWP) and after the passage of the Nineteenth Amendment to the U. S. Constitution in 1920, they conceived of a plan for a new amendment that would promote equal rights for women more generally. The ERA was written in 1923 by Alice Paul, suffragist leader and founder of the National Woman's Party.
Between 1910 and 1919, fourteen states adopted minimum wage laws for women, responding to a campaign led by Florence Kelley and the National Consumers' League (NCL). In 1919, both the House and Senate passed the 19 th Amendment and the battle for state ratification commenced. Three-fourths of the states were needed to ratify the amendment. The battle for ratification came down to the state of Tennessee in the summer of 1920. The deciding vote was cast by twenty-four year-old Harry Burn. Originally intending to vote no, Burn changed his vote after receiving a telegram from his mother asking him to support womens suffrage.
On August 18, 1920, Tennessee ratified the 19 th Amendment. Six days later, Secretary of State Colby certified the ratification, and, with the stroke of his pen, American women gained the right to vote after a seventy-two year battle. U. S. Supreme Court declared minimum wage laws for women unconstitutional in 1923, and those laws served as the basis for the enactment of minimum wage laws for men and women in the Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938. The Equal Rights Amendment (2009) was to guarantee the rights affirmed by the U.
S. Constitution are held equally without regard to sex. The ERA would provide legal remedies against sex discrimination for both women and men. The most important effect was expected to be the clarification sex discrimination for federal and state courts.
Sex would be a suspect classification, and governmental treatment of males or females differently as a class would be subject to judicial scrutiny and meet the highest level of justification to be upheld as constitutional. Craig Craig et al. v. Boren, Governor of Oklahoma (1976) tested treating males differently than females. The Court's conclusion was that a law, which treats males less favorably than females, must serve important governmental objectives and must be substantially related to achievement of those objectives.
Michael M. v. Superior Court of Sonoma County (1981) tested California's statutory rape law to see if the female could also be charged in the case of statutory rape. The court used sex as a basis for treating equally guilty males and females differently. The court called for even handed enforcement of the law.
Alice Paul died on July 9, 1977, in Moorestown, New Jersey, a few miles from her birthplace and family home of Paulsdale. Her legacy lives on, bearing witness to the significance of her life and inspiring others who struggle for social justice. The Alice Paul Institute was founded in 1985 and is dedicated to creating a heritage and leadership development center at Paulsdale. The Institute works to educate and encourage women and girls to take leadership roles in their communities. In her name, the API works to fulfill its mission to honor her legacy, preserve her home, and develop future leaders. References ERA (2009).
Retrieved on June 1, 2009 from web Paul, A. (2009). Equal rights amendment Retrieved on June 1, 2009 from web Rhodes, K. (2003) Introduction to influence retrieved on May 20, 2009 from web Simons, H. (2001). Persuasion in society. Thousand Oaks, Cal. : Sage Publications. U. S.
Supreme Court (1981). Michael M. v. Superior Court of Sonoma County web U. S. Supreme Court (1976).
Craig et al. v. Boren, Governor of Oklahoma web.
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