American Women Are Coming out of Their Binders

It would be an understatement to say that women must have suffered from listening to the presidential debate on Tuesday evening. A feeling of general uneasiness took over the room upon hearing the two men discuss abortion rights and equal pay, as if they were symptoms of the sexist disease that both were describing and blaming the other of. And this time, the award went to Romney (It’s about time.) With absolute frankness, he told how he had been shocked by the lack of women applying for posts within his governmental cabinet in Massachusetts in 2002. “I went to a number of women’s groups and said, ‘Can you help us find folks?’ and they brought us whole binders full of women,” he declared, taking an unfortunate shortcut. The blogosphere went wild over his “binders full of women” gaffe. It provided fairly amusing memes, such as the one showing the ever lewd Bill Clinton searching for said binder, much to the distress of the onlooking Obama.

More disturbingly, the debate brought on an unpleasant feeling of deja vu, since abortion rights and equal pay were also the two biggest demands from American women back in the 1970s. In the struggle for emancipation, feminists fought for the right to be in charge of their own bodies and for recognition of equality in the workplace. While men certainly did not make the task easy for them, women also had to tackle the hostility of conservative women, namely Phyllis Schlafly.

After the Supreme Court’s verdict in Roe vs. Wade (1973), which gave women the right to abort, the battle continued over the Equal Rights Amendment, which was supported by feminist organizations and would put equal pay in the Constitution. With the help of a whole load of naturalist arguments, Schlafly led her biggest campaign, explaining the multiple dangers of such a measure.

Following a well established strategy among the conservatives, she moved the debate from the social and economic purview to a cultural one. She explained that the amendment would remove the difference between men and women, and women would become just like men, subjected to the same duties, such as military service. Worse yet, the ambiguous wording establishing equality of the sexes (and not only of women, explained Schlafly) would open the door to gay rights. In 1977, the amendment was not approved by enough states (35 out of the necessary 38) to enter into the Constitution. With this victory, Schlafly made way for the succeeding conservative tidal wave and, consequently, Reagan’s victory in 1980.

Thirty years on, equal pay is still being debated in the course of a presidential election. Further still, forty years after Roe v. Wade, abortion is still a topic of debate between the two candidates, proving that the judgment is not considered legitimate by some of the population.

Taking into consideration such a sad overview, there is no doubt that it will require more than just women’s names in a binder to allow real equality of the sexes