In America, the future of the women’s movement echoes its past
The U.S. government once asked women what they wanted. It was 1977, and the eyes of the nation turned to Houston as an estimated 20,000 people — Gloria Steinem and Coretta Scott King, Democrats and Republicans, lesbians and straight women, those who were born in America and some who were not — gathered for the only federally-funded women’s rights conference of its kind in U.S. history.
“We promise to accept nothing less than justice for every woman,” Maya Angelou told the exuberant attendees in a poem she composed for the occasion.
The National Women’s Conference called for ratification of the Equal Rights Amendment, which would explicitly ban discrimination based on sex. The women asked for affordable childcare, equal pay for equal work and that the federal government fund abortions for women who could not afford the procedure. They stressed the importance of national healthcare. They called for an end to discriminatory rape laws. They demanded the nation stop deporting immigrant mothers of American-born children.
In 2017, the government didn’t ask women what they wanted, but hundreds of thousands of them spoke up anyway. They poured into the nation’s capital for the Women’s March on Washington, flooding the streets to articulate many of the same demands as those women in Houston 40 years ago — and to insist that what rights had been granted remain protected. They called again for the Equal Rights Amendment to be included in the Constitution. They emphasized again the need for “affordable childcare,” “equal pay” and “access to safe, legal, affordable abortion and birth control.” They said women have a right to live “free of all forms of violence against our bodies” and that “it is our moral duty to keep families together.”
While the demands were echoes of 1977, the mood was different in 2017, tinged with trepidation over the election of President Trump, whose treatment of women raised eyebrows before and during the campaign, and led some Republicans to denounce him. However, enough voters decided they either did not believe the accusations against Trump, or they did not care. (Photos: AP, Getty, USA TODAY Network)
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