What Do You Think of the Equal Rights Amendment?

Post date: Dec 5, 2010 5:30:42 PM

Responded to a question on Girls Ask Guys as to what I thought of the ERA. I was fired up after reading some comments saying men are the ones who need equality and that women should just shut up. Here was my response to them. I won best response for whatever that's worth.

Most definitely for the Equal Rights Amendment! Sorry fellas, you've had 236 years on top convincing women our place was to serve you as wives and mothers of children. And where has this gotten any of us? Our society is a mess!

While we are too busy managing work with all of the same home responsibilities our mothers had, you were creating two wars, a financial meltdown, bailing out banks and car companies that continue to send US jobs overseas, polluting our environment, deregulating business, giving the wealthiest Americans tax breaks, allowing our schools to rot and children to resort to gun violence, maintaining control over a woman's family planning decisions and allowing domestic terrorists to bomb abortion clinics, developing pornography into an industrialized sex industry that exploits 52% of Americans, spending our parents' retirements, so they can't retire and open more jobs to us, and slowly but surely turning the US into a 3rd world country.

When women are 5% of Fortune 500 CEOs, 17% of Congress and only recently 1/3 of the Supreme Court - our numbers are token in terms of decision making. We cannot be blamed for this mess, but we are responsible for cleaning it up and rebuilding America by insisting on our equality now.

You cannot keep 1/2 the population down and expect to remain the leader of the Free World. Something has to give.

It just amazes me when guys don't realize how every issue that impacts women - impacts men and children too! We aren't mutually exclusive! The real winners in keeping women and girls as 2nd class citizens are businesses and religious institutions who profit from sex discrimination - paying women less, charging us higher health insurance premiums, denying us paid leave or flexible work schedules, not enforcing protective orders against domestic violence or strengthening sentencing and prevention programs for rapists or insisting that social security still be based solely on lifetime earnings when it is clear women often leave workplaces to raise children and sacrifice pay and promotions because of it. This all hurts men too and families who rely on mom's paychecks and love.

ERA will never take-away benefits from men but extend them to women and girls. It is a win-win-win for all people! Wake up and do something! Join United For Equality on FB and believe that you matter enough to be equal.