University of Virginia Library

E.R.A.

We have heard from usually reliable
sources that the Committee on Privileges and
Elections of Virginia's House of Delegates was
considering a bill which would guarantee
equal rights for women. It was also
reported that this bill would ratify a proposed
amendment to the U.S. Constitution known
to the reading public as "ERA."

It sounded like a good idea. Equal rights
for women: they are just as valid, just as
worthy as equal rights for any other section
of this country's population. More necessary
to be codified, too, for whereas racial bias is a
product of short-term (historically speaking)
confrontations between different groups,
sexual prejudice is the result of too many
thousands of years of cultural molding. It is
not an easy imp to exorcise. It is, indeed, a
pernicious sprite to which many do not
realize they are victim. So when a society
wakes up enough to see the inequities within
it, then by all means it should legislate an end
to them.

But there already exist laws which, if
properly interpreted and enforced, would
remedy most of those very inequities that
ERA attempts to banish. And there exists the
possibility of passing other laws to attack
specifically those problems not covered under
present legislation, most of which is not
consciously designed to discriminate against,
but to protect the "weaker sex." The need for
such protection has drastically declined,though
it is not without value for women who prefer
traditional roles. Most of it was passed in the
spirit of protecting the individual from
himself, a motive which may be sincere, but
which we deplore. If a woman undergoes
more risk than usual by working as a night
watchman in a slum area factory, for
example, it should be she who makes the
decision and accepts the responsibility.

Injustices do continue, and their
elimination should be the goal of us all. But
the solution does not lie in piling law upon
law in hopes of stifling violations by their
sheer weight. Legislation which is a
repetition of other legislation does nothing
more to end the wrong which the first was
supposed to end. A solution takes
firmness–firmness in the courts and firmness
by the wronged to correct their grievances.
No number of new laws will change that, as
long as there is one law to protect it.

There is another problem–one which in all
likelihood could not have been mentioned a
few years ago. That is the tendency of new,
highly-publicized rights laws to suffer by the
overtaxing of their privileges, so that their
sensibleness is questioned and their future is
imperiled. It would be an ill-placed blow for
equal rights if the courts, in attempting to
carry out the law in fairness, were forced to
bow to the determination of those motivated
not by sincere concern, but by the wish
to throw themselves upon the pyre of
publicity. The ERA has received far too much
controversial coverage and overblown rhetoric
to give it the solemnity with which a sober
nation can lay it down as a firm rededicating
of humanitarian ideals.

The Elections and Privileges Committee
indefinitely tabled the amendment last night,
and whether or not the Delegates did it
because they recognized its redundancy and
vagueness, or because they are, quite simply,
unreconstructed male chauvinists, we may at
least be relieved that Virginia, unlike so many
other states, has managed not to confuse a
good cause with a poor law.