A BIT OF HISTORY
©2021 SARAH BECKER
Ratification ERA
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ometimes fate has a way of writing a new chapter. In truth, the ongoing fight for passage of the Equal Rights Amendment [ERA] has left me fatigued. But now—with New York Governor Andrew Cuomo’s resignation—for reason of sexual misconduct— the arrival of New York State’s first female Governor, the AFLCIO’s first female President— the political worm has turned. On March 17, 2021, the U.S. House of Representatives again passed the Equal Rights Amendment. My only question: By what date will Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Dick Durbin [D-IL], Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer [D-NY] deliver an affirmative vote? The American Heritage dictionary defines chauvinism as the “prejudiced belief in the superiority of one’s own group.” The Oxford American Dictionary defines chauvinism as “excessive or prejudiced support or loyalty;” a male chauvinist as a “man showing excessive loyalty to men and prejudice against women.” The New Jersey constitution “granted the right to vote to ‘all free inhabitants’ thus enfranchising women until 1807: when a new state constitution restricted suffrage to males.” The U.S. Census Bureau defined the term free inhabitant in 1790. “Assistant marshals listed the name of each head of household, and asked the following questions: The number of free White males aged under 16 years, of 16 years and upward; Number of free White females; Number of other free persons, and Number of slaves. Free inhabitants were not listed individually until 1850. In one of the colonial era’s few examples of women’s suffrage, Old Town Crier
Lady Deborah Moody was permitted to vote in a Long Island town meeting in 1655. Of greater interest—to me at least—was the women’s literacy measure. “The determination was made on the basis of women’s ability to sign their names to documents with either an ‘X’ or a written signature. Massachusetts’ illiteracy rate was 50%, New Netherland’s 60%, and Virginia’s 75%. Henings Collection of the Laws of Virginia refers to femes covert—“orphans, femes covert and persons of unsound mind”—beginning in 1657-8. Sir William Blackstone described the doctrine of coverture in his 1765 Commentaries: “By marriage, the husband and wife are one person in law: that is, the very being or legal existence of the woman is suspended during the marriage, or at least is incorporated and consolidated into that of the husband: under whose wing, protection and cover, she performs everything; and is therefore called in our law—a feme-covert….” “A married woman or feme covert was a dependent, like an underage child or a slave, and could not own property in her own name or control her own earnings, except under very specific circumstances,” the Harvard Business School explained. “Many women were in a position of legal dependence as a result of their particular situation, be it youth, poverty, or enslavement.” “The doctrine’s empirical roots were in the customs of medieval Normandy,” author Norma Basch concluded. “The concept of marital unity’s… religious origins were in the one-flesh doctrine of Christianity.” Bottom line: abortion is controversial, vasectomies are not. The law of coverture
lingered until the 1970s. “The work experience of women is considerably influenced by their household duties and the presence of children,” the U.S. Census Bureau wrote in 1972. “For women 16 to 39 years old, that is, those more involved in childrearing only 36 percent worked 50 to 52 weeks in 1969.” In 1776 Abigail Adams lobbied husband, John, on behalf of women’s rights: “I desire you would Remember the Laidies, and be more generous and favourable to them than your ancestors. Remember all Men would be tyrants if they could. If perticular care and attention is not paid to the Laidies, we…will not hold ourselves bound by any Laws in which we have no voice or Representation.” Nowhere in the index to The Federalist Papers did I find a categorial listing for women.
I found only Virginian James Madison’s explanation of Negro slaves, Paper #54: “The federal constitution, therefore, decides with great propriety on the case of our slaves, when it views them in the mixed character of persons and of property. This is in fact their true character. It is the character bestowed on them by the laws under which they live…and it is admitted that if the laws were to restore the rights which have been taken away, the Negroes could no longer be refused an equal share of representation with the other inhabitants.” Were married women not also viewed “in the mixed character of persons and property?” The takeaway for Negroes voting rights; for women’s equal rights is? Mary Wollstonecraft’s A Vindication of the Rights of Women was first published in
1792, the same year Alexandria Quaker Edward Stabler opened his Apothecary shop. Free, as defined by the American Heritage dictionary: “(1) Not bound or constrained, at liberty; (2) Not under obligation or necessity; (3a) Having political independence, and (3b) Governed by consent and possessing civil liberties.” In the 1830s gender hierarchy, separate spheres, and marital unity defined the rules of engagement. In New York, in 1832, bridegroom and newspaper editor Robert Dale Owen, of Scotland and Indiana “wrote a bold” marriage contract: “Of the unjust rights which in virtue of this ceremony an iniquitous law tacitly gives me over the person and property of another, I cannot legally, but I can morally divest A BIT OF HISTORY > PAGE 10
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