
          Women and the Constitution
          By Hannon, SharronSharron Hannon
          Vol. 10, No. 2, 1988, pp. 1-3
          
          In 1776, Abigail Adams wrote husband John, importuning him to
"remember the Ladies" in drafting the code of laws of the new
nation.
          However, the "ladies" were not remembered by
the founding fathers. Eleven years after Abigail Adams's letter, the
framers of the Constitution drafted a document beginning, "We the
people." What they meant was, "We the men." In 1787, women
were not considered even three-fifths of a person, as male slaves
were. Women were disfranchised and largely invisible in public
life. It would take more than a hundred years of struggle to get the
U.S. Constitution amended to allow women to vote; an amendment stating
that women have equal rights with men has yet to be added, despite
more than sixty years of trying.
          In the fall of 1986, as preparations got underway for celebrating
the bicentennial of the Constitution, a group of women approached
former first lady Rosalynn Carter with the idea for a symposium that
would "remember the ladies." She lent her support and so, in
February 1988, an overflow crowd of 1,500 women from every state and
ten foreign countries gathered in Atlanta to study and discuss and
call attention to the founding fathers' omissions.
          "Women and the Constitution: A Bicentennial Perspective" was
sponsored by the Carter Center of Emory University in conjunction with
the Carter Presidential Library and Georgia State University. Rosalynn
Carter asked three former first ladies-Lady Bird Johnson, Betty Ford
and Pat Nixon-to join her as convenors of the symposium. All agreed,
although health problems prevented the latter two from actually
attending the conference.
          Nancy Reagan was also invited to be a convenor. She
declined-understandably. For while attempts were 

made to keep the
conference scholarly and non-partisan, there was no way to avoid
comparisons of women's generally forward progress during preceding
administrations and the retrenchment that has followed during the
Reagan years. It was similarly impossible not to wonder what a change
in White_House tenants may mean for the future of issues like the
Equal Rights Amendment, which was defeated three states short of
ratification in 1982.
          "We've become comfortable with our prejudices," noted
Rosalynn Carter in a pre-symposium press conference. "We need to be
inspired to make our country better. I hope that's something the next
election can do."
          Though none of the presidential candidates attended the symposium
(being busy campaigning in New Hampshire at the time), the organizers
no doubt hoped to catch their attention by scheduling the event less
than a month before Super Tuesday. They at least caught the attention
of the media: 150 reporters and radio and TV people swarmed around the
hotel where the conference was held-a surprisingly large number for a
conference on women.
          But then there were some big drawing cards: Supreme_Court Justice
Sandra Day O'Connor and former Vice-Presidential candidate Geraldine
Ferraro. Their presence drew attention to how far women have come
since 1870, when Myra Bradwell was denied a license to practice law
because she was a woman, and 1872, when Susan B. Anthony was arrested
for trying to vote.
          Women still have a long way to go, however. As Coretta Scott King
noted in her address to conference participants, if black_women were
represented in Congress in proportion to their numbers in the general
population, there would be 

thirty black_women in the U.S. House of
Representatives and seven Senators. Instead, there is only one black
woman in Congress: Rep. Cardiss Collins of Illinois.
          Many conference speakers pushed for women's increased involvement
in politics, both as voters and candidates. "If you don't run, you
can't win," was the theme of Ferraro's speech.
          Former U.S. Rep. Bella Abzug had a unique idea for speeding up
women's access to political power. "Let's ask both parties to
commit all open seats to women until some measure of equity is
reached," she suggested during the closing plenary. "Let's ask
that one Senator of the two from each state be female. Why
not?"
          Other speakers looked at the judicial system as an arena for
advancing women's rights, pointing out that it wasn't until 1971 that
the Supreme_Court used the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth
Amendment to find sex discrimination unconstitutional. Since then,
more than fifty cases have been heard by the Court relating to hiring,
promotions, maternity leave, disability insurance, pension rights and
seniority.
          "Not all such challenges have been successful," noted
Justice O'Connor in her keynote speech. "But there is no question
that the Court has now made clear that it will no longer view as
benign archaic and stereotypic notions concerning the roles and
abilities of males and females."
          In the l980s, however, the number of sex discrimination cases being
heard has declined. "There are not a lot of Fourteenth Amendment
cases left to bring," said Isabelle Pinzler, director of the
ACLU's Women's Rights Project, in a panel discussion with other
attorneys on the role of advocacy in promoting women's
rights. "Without the ERA, there won't be much change."
          Another drawback to progress through the courts was raised by
former EEOC chair Eleanor Holmes Norton: "We must depend on the
generosity of a largely male judiciary."
          This is especially true of federal_courts. Since 1981, President
Reagan has filled 334 seats on the federal bench-and only twenty-seven
of his appointees have been female.
          So what about the Equal Rights Amendment? It was the topic of both
a mini-plenary ("ERA: Was It Worth It?") and a panel discussion
("Putting Women in the Constitution: The Future of the ERA"), and it
was obvious from both sessions that there is no consensus on the
future of the struggle for ratification.
          There is not even consensus on the past. Some regard the 1972-1982
period of national focus on the ERA as the finest hour of the women's
movement.
          "Never have women learned so much and moved so fast," said
panelist Erma Bombeck, who spent a year traveling with former White
House Press Secretary Liz Carpenter to lobby in unratified states.
          Others, however, resented what political scientist Janet Bowles
termed the "artificial consensus" to make the ERA the
centerpiece of the women's movement. "The demise of the ERA gave
feminists freedom to reassess other goals," she said.
          Eleanor Smeal, who as president of the National Organization for
Women was the strategist behind the ERA Countdown Campaign, was
unwilling to pause to argue the past.
          "We must go forward," she said. "The drive for total
equality is still so needed. Statutes can be reversed. Executive
orders overturned. What we knew then intellectually, we now know
through experience-we need a constitutional guarantee."
          NOW, in fact, has already launched a drive for "the new ERA" and
activists were busy circulating petitions among the conference
participants. It was the only active organizing visible-a fact that
troubled some.
          "It doesn't make sense to spend these resources and gather this
talent without using it as a stepping stone," said Margie Pitts
Hames, an Atlanta attorney who argued Doe
v. Bolton, the companion case to Roe v. Wade, which established
the right to abortion in 1973. "I see no agenda, no plan, no
direction. We'll go back to our various places without mobilizing the
energy I feel here."
          Hames and others had hoped the conference might at least generate
some resolutions. And they were further disappointed by what they
perceived as a decision to avoid issues like abortion rights,
homelessness and the feminization of poverty, which were not directly
addressed in any of the thirty-one panels or five mini-plenaries.
          But the goals of the conference were academic, not activist;
focused, not broad. What the organizers aimed to produce was not
resolutions and a plan of action, but some serious scholarship on the
conference topic which will be disseminated through various
professional journals and through a secondary school curriculum being
developed in conjunction with the Carter Center.
          The research generated by the conference as well as audio and video
tapes of the proceedings will be maintained by the Carter Center and
the National Archives. Georgia Public Television is also putting
together a documentary on the conference which will be shown on PBS
stations nationwide.
          For most conference participants, the best part was just being
there-in one place at one time-with women who have been Cabinet
members and served in Congress, who have argued or been plaintiffs in
landmark court cases, who are deans of law schools and college
presidents.
          "It was a real high to literally rub elbows with so many
incredible women," said Heather Kleiner, who is working to
revitalize the Women's Studies Program at the University of
Georgia.
          It was impossible to come away from such a gathering not feeling
empowered and energized. "This conference is a kind of political
chicken soup," noted Bella Abzug. "It helps you get out of bed
in the morning and say, 'I can conquer the day.'".
          
            Sharron Hannon is a Georgia-based freelancer who writes frequently on women's rights issues.
          
        
