Document 26.16 Phyllis Schlafly, “What’s Wrong with ‘Equal Rights’ for Women?” 1972

Phyllis Schlafly | “What’s Wrong with ‘Equal Rights’ for Women?” 1972

Phyllis Schlafly, a white mother of six, emerged as the foremost critic of the women’s liberation movement in the 1970s. Schlafly believed that feminists foolishly abdicated their responsibilities as women. She began the “Stop ERA” campaign in 1972, which, combined with her 1977 book, The Power of the Positive Woman, rallied women to oppose the Equal Rights Amendment, a constitutional amendment which was then being considered by the states for ratification. Schlafly herself worked outside the home as a successful lawyer in St. Louis. The following document is an excerpt from her 1972 essay “What’s Wrong with ‘Equal Rights’ for Women?”

Of all the classes of people who ever lived, the American woman is the most privileged. We have the most rights and rewards, and the fewest duties. Our unique status is the result of a fortunate combination of circumstances.

  1. We have the immense good fortune to live in a civilization which respects the family as the basic unit of society. This respect is part and parcel of our laws and our customs. It is based on the fact of life—which no legislation or agitation can erase—that women have babies and men don’t.

    If you don’t like this fundamental difference, you will have to take up your complaint with God because He created us this way. The fact that women, not men, have babies is not the fault of selfish and domineering men, or of the establishment, or of any clique of conspirators who want to oppress women. It’s simply the way God made us. . . .

    THE FINANCIAL BENEFITS OF CHIVALRY

  2. The second reason why American women are a privileged group is that we are the beneficiaries of a tradition of special respect for women which dates from the Christian Age of Chivalry. The honor and respect paid to Mary, the Mother of Christ, resulted in all women, in effect, being put on a pedestal. . . .

    In other civilizations, such as the African and the American Indian, the men strut around wearing feathers and beads and hunting and fishing (great sport for men!), while the women do all the hard, tiresome drudgery including the tilling of the soil (if any is done), the hewing of wood, the making of fires, the carrying of water, as well as the cooking, sewing and caring for babies.

    This is not the American way because we were lucky enough to inherit the traditions of the Age of Chivalry. In America, a man’s first significant purchase is a diamond for his bride, and the largest financial investment of his life is a home for her to live in. American husbands work hours of overtime to buy a fur piece or other finery to keep their wives in fashion, and to pay premiums on their life insurance policies to provide for her comfort when she is a widow (benefits in which he can never share).

    THE REAL LIBERATION OF WOMEN

  3. The third reason why American women are so well off is that the great American free enterprise system has produced remarkable inventors who have lifted the backbreaking “women’s work” from our shoulders. . . .

    The real liberation of women from the backbreaking drudgery of centuries is the American free enterprise system which stimulated inventive geniuses to pursue their talents—and we all reap the profits. The great heroes of women’s liberation are not the straggly-haired women on television talk shows and picket lines, but Thomas Edison who brought the miracle of electricity to our homes to give light and to run all those labor-saving devices—the equivalent, perhaps, of a half-dozen household servants for every middle-class American woman. Or Elias Howe who gave us the sewing machine which resulted in such an abundance of readymade clothing. Or Clarence Birdseye who invented the process for freezing foods. Or Henry Ford, who mass-produced the automobile so that it is within the price-range of every American, man or woman.

Source: Donald T. Critchlow and Nancy McLean, eds., Debating the American Conservative Movement, 1945 to the Present (New York: Rowman and Littlefield, 2009), 197–99.