Six ERA Leaflets: #3 Women Are Not Persons, Wives Are Chattels.
[ERA]. National Woman’s Party. Small Archive of Six ERA Leaflets. Washington, D.C.: National Woman’s Party, [ND, but generally ca. 1943].
A group of six leaflets, all in excellent condition: (1) Single sheet folded once to 5 x 8-1/4” (four sides); printed on light gray stock. (2) Single sheet folded twice to 4 x 9”; printed on buff stock. (3) Single sheet, folded once to 5 x 9” (four sides); printed on buff stock. (4) Leaflet: 5 x 8-1/2; 8 ; printed on buff stock. (5) Single sheet, folded to 5-1/8 x 8-1/2” (four sides); printed on buff stock. (6) Single sheet folded to 4 x 9” (four sides); printed on buff stock; pencil correction to text at third panel.
(1) “I Appeal to Women for United Support,” by Joseph Whitney. Whitney addresses the concerns of those that fear the Equal Rights Amendment will eliminate legislation enacted to protect women and children. She suggests that changing industry and stronger unions have eliminated the conditions that first necessitated such legislation. Whitney emphasizes the ERA, by “raising the status of women in the estimation of the public” will bring about equal pay for equal work and make it possible for women to attain higher level positions.
(2) “Do You Know That A Woman Does Not Have...” The leaflet enumerates a series of legal restrictions women face; for instance, a woman does not have: “equal right to make contracts”; “equal opportunities in government services”; “equal pay for equal work” or “equal control of her property.” The leaflet names a number of restrictions states have put in place: Oklahoma bars women from their higher elective offices; the Wisconsin legislature bars women from employment by the legislature; in Georgia a husband may lay claim to a wife’s earnings outside the home. The leaflet describes an array of further inequities facing women from state-to-state, concluding “Do you know that these discriminations are not merely humiliation but bitter reality to many women?” and asks for support of an amendment which “will wipe out existing discriminations against women and extend to them complete citizenship rights?”
(3) “Women Are Not Persons Wives Are Chattels.” The leaflet asks how is it possible that recent rulings have made defining women as “chattels” rather than persons and points to the interpretation of the Federal Constitution “in the light of common law.” “Thus the position of women under our Constitution became the position of women under medieval English common law...” The leaflet argues the necessity of an Equal Rights Amendment because of the “astounding number of laws discriminating against women” and addresses itself to the question of whether states should enact such legislation and of how laws regarding dower rights, alimony, act of consent will be effected.
(4) “The Equal Rights Amendment Questions and Answers.” The leaflet gives the full text of the Lucretia Mott Amendment and points out that “there are still on the statute books of the forty-eight states more than one thousand laws discriminating against women because of sex.” Like other National Woman’s Party leaflets on the ERA, it reiterates the objections of those that fear the ERA will eliminate hard-won protective legislation. Finally, it declares: “The Equal Rights Amendment is the statement of a broad principle, such as others in the Constitution, which the framers of that document considered fundamental.... Fundamental principles were incorporated in the Constitution. Other matters were left to the states....The Equal Rights Amendment will guarantee them the fundamental rights other citizens already enjoy.”
(5) “Glimpse Of Laws Shows Need for Equal Rights” by Burnita Shelton Matthews. A précis by Washington lawyer Burnita Matthews of the arguments for an Equal Rights Amendment. She breaks down the four types of “special labor laws” for women and notes that the amendment “would prevent impediments being interposed to the employment of women except as applied to ot
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