...It is engraved in our constitution that “all men are created equal.” It is something we learn about at a young age. Yet it only states that men are created equal, not women. Many activists have been fighting for women to have equal rights and many are still fighting. Years ago, women were not allowed to vote, not allowed to hold jobs, and were simply thought of being the ones who stayed at home to be with the children. Now women can vote, have jobs, and do things men can do. With all the advancements towards equality, women seem to be taking a step back, because women are treated unfairly today. The United States Federal Government should re-ratify the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA), making sure all the 50 states accept it, because it will insure everyone will be treated equal. In this essay, I will briefly trace the history of women inequality and explain why it is a problem. Next, I will provide evidence as to how women are treated unfairly, and explain what the Equal Rights Amendment is. Lastly, I will explain how re-ratifying the ERA will guarantee equality for all, by eliminating women inequality. It has been over 100 years since the first women’s rights convention was held in 1864 and there have been so many advancements for women rights. The first Women’s Trade Union League was established in 1903, women gain the right to vote in1920, and Equal Rights Amendment was finally introduced in 1923. The ERA was what women in America were fighting for; something that would guarantee...
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...In class today I was pro-ERA. I felt that this amendment would give men and women constitutional equality, so why would I vote against it? Although, I did feel it wasn’t 100% necessary today I felt that this amendment could help women even if it was in small ways. However, after reading "Nine Reasons to Reject Equal Rights Amendment" I felt that I was leaning more towards the anti-ERA side of the argument. The ERA would give more power to the Federal Government. The Federal Government would have a vast amount of power in topics that "include traditional differences of treatment on the account of sex." Such as, marriage, divorce and alimony, child custody, adoptions, abortion, sex crimes, and private and public schools. I never thought that...
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...The Equal Rights Amendment (ERA) was written in 1923 by Alice Paul. The purpose of the ERA was to ensure the equal application of the Constitution to all United States citizens, regardless of their sex. This is stated succinctly in the first section of the amendment: “Equality of rights under the law shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any state on account of sex.”1 The ERA was proposed in every Congress between 1923 and 1972.2 In 1972, it was finally passed and sent to individual states for ratification. At the end of the ERA’s proposing clause in 1982, it had been ratified by 35 states, making it fall just short of the 38 required to put it into the constitution.3 As the political tide turned more conservative...
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...In 1923, the Equal Rights Amendment was drafted by Alice Paul, who believed that the amendment was the appropriate follow-up to the 19th Amendment in guaranteeing equal rights for all. The ERA was aimed at the large number of state laws that restricted women’s jury service, controlling property, and guardianship rights over their children, among others. However, the ERA did not get passed in the United States Congress until 1972, forty-nine years later. It was quickly sent to the states for ratification. Initially, the amendment was met with great support and was approved by 30 out of the needed 38 state legislators within the first year. Because Congress put a seven-year deadline on the ratification process, the ERA needed to be approved three-fourths of the states by March 22, 1979. The amendment seemed promising as federal politicians and a majority of the public showed support (Stidolph). In Oklahoma, the ERA received following from many organizations such as the American Bar Association, Church Women United, and the American Association of University Women. The amendment passed in the Oklahoma Senate with a voice vote. However, there was growing controversy...
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...Merrit Duke History of American Women May 27, 2015 Equality: Too Much to Ask For? The Equal Rights Amendment has been the source of much debate for almost an entire century now. Since first purposed by Alice Paul in the 1920s one’s stance on the potential amendment has been a dividing factor in the political sphere. Though the amendment was shut down in the 1920s there has been discussion about adding the Equal Rights Amendment into the constitution today. If the potential amendment was to be brought back up my stance on the debate would be in support of the amendment. For some background on the debate on the Equal Rights Amendment it would be good to look back and see where activists in the past were split and what about the Equal Rights Amendment has divided them. The Antebellum era gave two different types of women activists, the true women and the Early Feminists. The True Women argued for gender distinctions, separate spheres, domesticity, and women as moral guardians in their natural role as a mother. The True Women would be the women who be apposed to the Equal Rights Amendment and would be active in the fight against it. Arguing against the True Women were the Early Feminists who stressed gender equality, suffrage for women, equal education, human rights, and saw women as rational beings. This group of activists would be in support of the Equal Rights Amendment. Next would be the Progressive era where the two parties in the debate would be the Early Feminists and...
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...In the words of Bernadette Cahill, the Equal Rights Amendment was an attempt “to finish the unfinished business of the Civil War” (Cahill, Bernadette). The main purpose for the ERA was to create equality for women under the law. The last time that anything like this was attempted was in 1870. Women’s Rights leaders of the time launched a campaign to reword the Fifteenth Amendment to include the word “sex.” The amendment in the constitution states, “race, color or previous condition of servitude.” This shows that since the original interpretation only applied to men, women themselves did not have the civil right to vote. At that point in time, they were purposefully not heard. In addition to this, they tried to implement a Sixteenth Amendment that dealt with women specifically, to no avail (Cahill, Bernadette). So from 1921 to 1923, Alice Paul drafted what is now known as the Equal Rights Amendment. Paul and the NWP, National Women’s Party, wanted to use this amendment in order to finally bring equality to all women (Cahill, Bernadette). The NWP had recently been fighting battles one...
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...Equal Rights Women equal rights had an impact on women's suffrage movement. This was historically significant by inspiring women to join the movement. For a long time, people didn’t consider women have equal rights like men. Men were the head of the house and they were the risk taker for their family. They were not allowed to work outside or to go to college. Women didn’t have rights to work in offices. If women go to college it is hard for them to find a job. The highest job for a woman was being a librarian, a teacher, a nurse, a chef, and a housewife. Women were not hired for the work that was considered males works such as, lawyers, doctors, managers, members of Congress. The News Wise stated that “through history, women have faced intense...
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...I’ll never be able to understand how someone can tell another person that they can’t identify or love as they please. Why so many people believe that someone who loves someone of the same sex, or identifies as something other than what is written on their birth certificate, don’t deserve the same rights as everyone else is beyond me. I believe that members of the LGBTQ community deserve the same rights and respect as everyone else, contrary to the popular belief that they are “diseased” or “ seeking attention”. Even though I am not a part of the LGBTQ community myself, many of my friends are and I believe that discrimination against them is equal to the discrimination against someone because of their skin color. In the 9th grade, I witnessed...
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...Equal Employment Opportunity and Employee Rights Luis Carrasco, Jade Hadfield, Jo Hemenway, Stafford McClendon, Emily Sementilli, Misty Wightman November 4, 2012 HRM/300 Timothy Turcotte Equal Employment Opportunity and Employee Right Over the course of history in the United States there have been many laws put in place to protect employees and employers. The Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990 and the Equal Employment Opportunity Act of 1972 are two such acts signed into law. Each of the laws protects workers from termination for causes outlined in the acts. The Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990 is a wide-ranging civil rights law that prohibits, under certain circumstances, discrimination based on disability. It affords similar protections against discrimination to Americans with disabilities as the Civil Rights act of 1964, which made discrimination based on race, religion, sex, national origin, and other characteristics illegal. Drug testing has become popular in many businesses in today’s society. This upsets many employees because they think that what they do on their own time does not affect what they do at work. The Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990 was put into place to make it easier for American’s that have disabilities to navigate. There are five different categories of this Act...
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...Stephanie L. Davis Professor Randall Gordon English Composition II 10428 22 February 2014 Equal Rights: Action or No Action In the article “Letter from Birmingham Jail,” the author Martin Luther King Jr., is responding to a minister’s opposing comments to King and his Southern Christian Leadership Conference organization’s actions in Birmingham, Alabama. The author reflects his point by portraying the fear of the residents of Birmingham and thus evoking the same emotion in the reader to justify the actions that were taken. King also adds further detailed information explaining the time and situation along with various activities occurring in the same area which explains the feeling and temperament of Birmingham. Although King was attempting to explain the call to action, the article rambles and addresses so many topics that the reader becomes lost and by the end has forgotten the actual goal of the correspondence. The article was written with a very passionate and disgusted tone for how colored people were being treated in the southern states. His choice of words that include “intolerance”, “injustice”, and “racial” stress both his deep pain and personal anger for the way that he and other colored people are being segregated and reacted to by whites, law enforcement, merchants, and various people in the community. Each term causes the reader to pause and contemplate the feeling of prejudice, how it would feel to be judged by the color of your skin, and have laws created...
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...Equal Employment Opportunity and Employee Rights Review Learning Team B HRM 300 May 18, 2015 Professor E. Hardin Equal Employment Opportunity and Employee Rights Review The Civil Rights Act of 1964 prohibits discrimination in all employment decisions on a basis of race, religion, ethnicity, sex, and national origin (DeCenzo, Robbins, Verlhurst, 2013). Not only does it protect in employment decisions but it also ended unequal application of voter registration requirements. When the Civil Rights Act of 1964 was put in place it ended segregation in schools as well. If this law would not be in place equality in the workplace would not have been possible and many would not be in the place they are in their careers now. The United States Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) is responsible for enforcing federal laws that make it illegal to discriminate against a job applicant or an employee because of the person's race, color, religion, sex (including pregnancy), national origin, age (40 or older), disability or genetic information (EEOC, 2015). EEOC also makes it illegal for anyone to discriminate against a person who has filed a discrimination complaint or someone that was involved in a discrimination investigation or law suit. With the law in place it gives the EEOC the right to investigate charges discrimination against employers that are covered by the EEOC law. When a person exposes any information or activity that is considered illegal...
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...Although the Equal Rights Amendment itself has never been ratified by the states, it is far from the only legislation on the topic. A variety of other amendments, Supreme Court decisions, and laws work to establish and protect equal rights under the law. Many of these protect rights specifically on the basis of race, but many also include discrimination on the basis of sex, which is what the ERA aimed to do. The first of these acts dates back to July of 1868, when the 14th Amendment was ratified following the Civil War, and was the first piece of legislation that would provide equal rights under the law. It guaranteed that “no state shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States;...
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...From American slavery in the 1850s to gay marriage in the 21st century, the debate for equal rights seems to never quite go away. People like Harriet Tubman, Martin Luther King Jr., or even more recently, Malala, each have made an impact on equal rights. In this cartoon by Tom Stiglich, Bruce Jenner is the one making an impact on equal rights for the LGBT community. As Jenner was once an Olympic runner himself, he seems to be depicted as one in this illustration. Jenner is running towards the finish line alongside a woman, who remains unknown. Through carefully selected word choices and powerful facial expressions, these two runners communicate that some type of victory has been won. What is most significant in this cartoon is what lies...
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...Equal Rights for Some On July 4th, 1776, the Declaration of Independence was adopted into the system, giving freedom that may have never been intended. This document specifically affected blacks. One effect was the emancipation of slaves, which gave blacks their freedom. Although blacks tried to get equal rights into the new constitution, there has been several alterations which extended from the freedom of slaves to the egalitarianism amongst men and women. The position of slavery was involved in the drafting of the document. The declaration contained an evident undertake of liberty and equality that was discontented for African-Americans prior to the Civil War and was only moderately rewarded after. Thomas Jefferson wrote in the declaration...
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...Equal rights has always been an issue for the minorities especially for the African American people in the United States.The African American people went through hardships throughout centuries. First they came as slaves from Africa to United States. Mostly all of them were in the south, where they were owned by farm owners. They were not seen as an equal individual, they were seen as properties only. When the founding fathers wrote the Declaration of Independence, they stated that all men are equal, but they were not seen as men, therefore, they can’t be treated as equal. However, when the American Revolution occured, many slaves were granted their freedom because they helped with the war, but they were still mistreated, and slavery was still...
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