Equal rights and women

When I was first married, then gave birth to my two children, I hadn't heard much about women's rights and equality.

I was too busy changing diapers, keeping house, cooking meals, and taking care of my kids from birth until they decided to leave home at about age eighteen. My Air Force husband was off in the wild blue yonder serving his country while I stayed home and battled measles, chicken pox, runny noses, pink eye, and car troubles..I was a stay at home mom.

After the kids left home, I had spare time to "find my own identify."

My husband wasn't crazy about my search for my identity. He wanted me to stay focused on home and him.

We watched television together, cut fire wood together, visited friends

If he decided to run into town to pick up a spark plug or just to buy gas, he wanted me to tag along.

By that time, he was retired and spent a lot of his time explaining to me how to better run a household.

We restacked the pantry canned goods in alphabetical order, and spent a lot of time sitting out on the deck drinking coffee and discussing world affairs.

I cooked, cleaned, laundered clothes, and did all the wifely things. He puttered in his workshop, then sat in his recliner resting his back until he fell asleep following the 6 p.m. news and weather. I washed dishes and cleaned up the kitchen while he napped.

Still, when women burned their bras (did they, really?) and paraded for equal employment and equality, I didn't feel a part of that movement.

It was in the 60s that woman began to rise up against male chauvinism, commercialism of beauty, not brains, and a male dominated society.

It was called Women's Liberation,.

There were issues like reproductive rights, domestic violence, equal pay, sexual harrassment.

Women became superwomen who worked outside the home, then returned home to husband and children to balance her superhuman career as wife, mother, housekeeper

She went to the polls to vote right along side her husband.

Actually, it was suffragist Alice Paul who gained notoriety for the rights of woman. She was a leader in the suffrage movement and was instrumental in gaining women the right to vote upon the adoption of the 19th amendment.

Alice Paul was a well-educated woman raised by Quaker parents.Though they were considered wealthy, they lived a simple austere life. As a child, Alice Paul often accompanied her mother to women's rights meetings. But her interest in the right to vote was sparked in 1908 after she heard a speech by suffragist Christabel Pankhurst. at the University of Birmingham in England.

After that, Alice Paul joined the Women's Social and Political Union. Her activities with the union led to her arrest and imprisonment three times..After that, Paul joined several suffragist associations and unions in America and lobbied to secure the right to vote for women. When their lobbying efforts proved fruitless, Paul and her colleagues formed the National Woman's Party in 1916 and began introducting some of the methods used by the suffrage movement in Britain. Tactics included demonstrations, parades, mass meetings, watch fires, hunger strikes and picketing. They sought attention and press coverage for their methods.

Alice Paul persevered and was quoted as saying, "When you put your hand to the plow, you can't put it down until you get to the end of the row."

In 1916 President Woodrow Wilson and other incumbents refused to support the suffrage movement so Paul and supporters staged their first political protest to picket the White House. The picketers, known as "Silent Sentinels," carried banners demanding the right to vote. Paul said that America was not a democracy because women were denied the right to vote.

At first the picketers were politely ignored but that changed. The suffragists became an embarrassment to President Wilson. It was decided that the picketings in front of the White House must stop. Picketers were arrested on charges of obstructing traffic.There were street confrontations and attacks. Spectators assaulted the picketers, both verbally and physically. Many picketers, including Paul, were convicted and jailed at the Occoquan Workhouse in Virginia.

In a protest of conditions at the workhouse, Paul began a hunger strike. This led to her being moved to the prison's psychiatric ward and force-fed raw eggs through a plastic tube. Three times a day they poured liquids into her stomach but Paul, frail and sick, refused to end the hunger strike and her fight for the vote. So she was set free. Newspapers carried stories about the jail terms and forced feedings of the suffragists. This angered many Americans and created more support for the suffrage movement.

In January 1918, President Wilson announced his support for suffrage. The next day, the House of Representives narrowly passed the Susan B. Anthony Amendment, which gave the vote to all women citizens. Then the Senate passed the Amendment by one vote. A little more than a year later, on August 28, 1920, Tennessee became the last state to ratify the amendment. (Arkansas was the 12th state in the nation to ratify the amendment.)

After a 70 year struggle, the 19th amendment became law.

But Alice Paul and her colleagues didn't stop their campaign for women's rights. Instead they began to push for an Equal Rights Amendment to the Constitution, which would guarantee woman protection against discrimination. Paul is credited with drafting the original equal rights amendment in 1923.

The amendment would not find its way to the Senate until 1972 when it was approved by the Senate and submitted to the state legislatures for ratification. Not enough states, only 35, voted in favor in time for the deadline. There was a seven year time limit for ratification which was later extended to 1982..Arkansas was not one of the states that ratified but almost half of the U.S. states have adopted the ERA into their state constitutions.

Alice Paul died at age 92 in July 1977.

Could Alice Paul have envisioned that women would be elected to Congress, appointed to the Supreme Court, and aspire to the presidency of the United States?

I'm thinking, yes.

She kept her hand to the plow.