ANOTHER YEAR OF THE WOMAN?

ANOTHER YEAR OF THE WOMAN? Senators Ted Kennedy and Barbara Boxer and representatives Carolyn Maloney and Jerrold Nadler will reintroduce the Equal Rights Amendment in Congress today, and will announce hearings on women�s equality in the House Judiciary Committee's Subcommittee on the Constitution, Civil Rights and Civil Liberties. Conservative online media is already up in arms, lamenting the funding the ERA would likely provide, for the first time, to poor women on Medicaid who need to access abortion. Yes, the ERA would help progressives fight for women�s bodily rights. But it is also a crucial legal protection -- one first introduced in Congress in 1923 -- necessary to end workplace discrimination against women, fight wage inequality, and stop obviously sexist corporate practices, such as insurance companies covering the cost of Viagra, but not birth control pills. I remember Maloney speaking at a young women�s leadership event last summer and lamenting the Democratic Party�s move away from strong support for the ERA. Hopefully these new hearings, held under a Congress with its first female speaker, will be a step toward reversing that trend. The amendment simply reads:

Equality of rights under the law shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any state on account of sex.

It�s time to put the Phyllis Schlafly era behind us. What�s so offensive in 2007 about equal rights for women? --Dana Goldstein