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We the Women: The Unstoppable Mothers of the Equal Rights Amendment
Ruth Bader Ginsburg believed that the equal rights of women belonged in the Constitution. She stood on the shoulders of brilliant women who persisted across generations to change the Constitution. We the Women tells their stories, showing what’s at stake in the current battle for the Equal Rights Amendment.
A century after the Nineteenth Amendment guaranteed women the constitutional right to vote, the quest for women’s full inclusion in the US Constitution continues.
After passage of the Nineteenth Amendment, revolutionary women demanded full equality beyond suffrage by proposing the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA). Congress took almost fifty years to adopt it in 1972, and the states took almost as long to ratify it. In January 2020, Virginia became the final state needed to ratify the amendment.
Why did the ERA take so long? Is it too late to add it to the Constitution? And what could it do for women?
Distinguished legal scholar Julie C. Suk tells the story of the ERA through the voices of the bold women lawmakers who created it. They faced opposition and subterfuge at every turn, but they kept the ERA alive. And, despite significant gains, the achievements of gender equality have fallen short, especially for working mothers and women of color. Suk excavates the ERA’s past to guide its future, explaining how the ERA can address hot-button issues such as pregnancy discrimination, sexual harassment, and unequal pay.
The rise of movements like the Women’s March and #MeToo have ignited women across the country. Unstoppable women are winning elections, challenging male abuses of power, and changing the law to support working families. Can they add the ERA to the Constitution and improve American democracy?
We the Women shows how the founding mothers of the ERA and the for-gotten mothers of all our children have transformed our living Constitution for the better.
A century after the Nineteenth Amendment guaranteed women the constitutional right to vote, the quest for women’s full inclusion in the US Constitution continues.
After passage of the Nineteenth Amendment, revolutionary women demanded full equality beyond suffrage by proposing the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA). Congress took almost fifty years to adopt it in 1972, and the states took almost as long to ratify it. In January 2020, Virginia became the final state needed to ratify the amendment.
Why did the ERA take so long? Is it too late to add it to the Constitution? And what could it do for women?
Distinguished legal scholar Julie C. Suk tells the story of the ERA through the voices of the bold women lawmakers who created it. They faced opposition and subterfuge at every turn, but they kept the ERA alive. And, despite significant gains, the achievements of gender equality have fallen short, especially for working mothers and women of color. Suk excavates the ERA’s past to guide its future, explaining how the ERA can address hot-button issues such as pregnancy discrimination, sexual harassment, and unequal pay.
The rise of movements like the Women’s March and #MeToo have ignited women across the country. Unstoppable women are winning elections, challenging male abuses of power, and changing the law to support working families. Can they add the ERA to the Constitution and improve American democracy?
We the Women shows how the founding mothers of the ERA and the for-gotten mothers of all our children have transformed our living Constitution for the better.
264 pages, Paperback
First published April 21, 2020
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August 19, 2020Suk 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.”
Read our full review here:
https://booktrib.com/2020/08/11/we-th...
Read our full review here:
https://booktrib.com/2020/08/11/we-th...
July 18, 2023
How'd we get from original feminism to now
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews