The Daily Herald from Chicago, Illinois • Page 17

THE HERALD Thursday, August 26, 1971 Section 2 --I A Time For Assessment WhaVs Happened To Women's Equality? by GENIE CAMPBELL While overt mass hysteria has sub- aided somewhat, the subject of women's rights is still very much an undefined area that breeds both indecision and general confusion. The only sure thing about women's lib is that it is here to stay. One year ago today, women celebrated the 50th anniversary of the suffrage movement, but amidst then- Jubilation, they pledged to continue their fight for absolute equality with their male counterparts. The right to vote is seen by many women as only a form of tokenism to quiet other serious charges of blocked opportunities and wage discrimination. Now, It is time for a yearly account.

What advancements toward feminine equality have been made since last August's pledge? THE EQUAL RIGHTS Amendment that was passed without hesitancy by the House of Representatives Aug. 10, 1970. prohibited any discrimination on account of sex but was sidelined by the Senate. Reintroduced in the House this session, It was amended by the House Judiciary Committee to the dissatisfaction of its backers. Those less than favorably inclined towards the Equal Rights Amendment felt these amendments would effectively kill the measure.

But opinion that ERA is dead because of the amendments was disputed last month by Cong. Don Edward, a i a of the House Judiciary Subcommittee that heard the bill. He has asked support for the amendment as originally introduced and feels it still has a chance when Congress reconvenes Sept. 8 as each of the two amendments, one exempting women from the draft and the other permitting state protective legislation to stand, must be voted on separately. Edward hopes for their defeat, leaving ERA as originally offered.

A BILL SIMILAR to the one introduced In the House by Rep. Martha Griffiths, was offered in the Senate by Birch Bayh, D-Ind Stopped by a successful filibuster while still in committee, it awaits any further action until Congress reconvenes. "The Equal Rights Amendment has been introduced in every Congress for the past 48 years, but it has had its supporters for more than 100 years," said Mrs. Griffiths in appearing last March to the House Subcommittee on the Judiciary for passage of ERA. "Whatever its problems in the past may have been; whatever the prejudices against it, it seems to me that at least young men must realize that in today's world the Equal Rights Amendment is a necessity." A RESOLUTION still alive in the Illinois legislature calls for Congress to act on the ERA.

Other action taken this post year to push the ERA and other bil'j pertinent to the future of women, includes the formation of a National Women's Caucus. It is a bipartisan coalition representing women of varied ages, races and political points of view. Its major aim is to elect women to office in numbers proportionate to the percentage of women in the national population. If men will not pass legislation for women, women will pass it themselves. IN ADDITION to the ERA, Congressman Abner J.

Mikva of Chicago introduced, at the Deginning of the year, the Women's Equality Act of 1971, a bill that more closely defines the areas of discrimination on account of sex. It calls for such specific action as banning discriminatory practices in housing and hiring. While not as encompassing as the ERA, the Equality Act of 1971 is believed to have a better chance of passage since it sets up definite guidelines for interpretation. The bill is still in the House Judiciary Committee, and there is no way of telling when it will be reported to the House for a vote. Suburban Living Similar legislation has been introduced in the Senate by Birch Bayh of Indiana.

A state caucus to organize Illinois women meets for the first time Sept. 12. "IT IS A GOOD YEAR for women to run for state office," said Eugenia Chapman, state assemblywoman from Arlington Heights. The reapportioning of districts will automatically cut back on the number of incumbents being re-elected. "It's ridiculous that the Equal Rights Amendment has been around for 48 years and still hasn't been passed," said Joanna Martin, a Chicago member of NOW responsible for the organization's public relations, "We are now involved in a double political )ern," she continued.

"The first is a women's lobby, to make sure that women are represented at all times during Congressional sessions." (A benefit, "From Promise to Power," ESPECIALLY FOR THE FAMILY Women's Lib Fights Discrimination In Higher Education For Women by PATRICIA McCORMACK NEW YORK, (UPI) --The women's liberation movement gets credit for the appearance of "woman studies" on college campuses. Such studies have nothing to do with anatomy, sex appeal or the measurements of a woman's hips, waist, bustline. Like the black studies courses introduced before them the "woman studies" aim to raise the consciousness of everyone to injustices dealt a segment of American society to wit, females, in this instance. Higher education does its bit to damage women, according to the 1970 report of the President's Task Force on Women's Rights and Responsibilities. Consider, from the Task Force in education is one of the most damaging injustices women suffer.

It denies them equal education and equal employment opportunity, contributing to a second class image." TYPICAL OF the "woman studies" is the "Second Sex" course at the Experimental College at Fresno State College in California. In its second year, it features lectures by the more outspoken of the women's lib promoters, including Ti Grace Atkinson. Other courses go on to show how women are discriminated against in literature through sexual stereotyping. The poor treatment of women in standard works even has given birth to The Feminist Press in Baltimore a press determined to get out the straight story of of the women presented in sexual- ly-ttereotyped rotes by earlier authors, mostly males. Many universities, such as the University of Maine, have set up committees to review the status of faculty women.

These aim to end job discrimination within the university. The woman course at Maine is called "Fern-Lib." As at many universities, the course has supplanted black studies as the "now" elective. CREDIT COURSES in women's rights and their social position at some schools are offered through the history department. Mississippi State College for Women in Columbus, reports that last year the school started its "Contemporary Woman Sequence" of study. The sequence offers 10 courses designed primarily for the all-woman college.

Course offerings include dynamics of leadership. At Mississippi State University at State College, women's lib is old hat. But University News Editor Boyd Gatlin says, "Women students still have a long way to go in getting the same rights as men students." Dr John K. Bettersworth, vice president at that school, said women's lib has ted to an attempt to hire more women professors and "to adjust our salaries so that females are paid for their work and not underpaid because of their sex." BOSTON FEMALE LIBERATION, one of the largest of several women's organizations in the Boston area and among the most active in the nation, last fall successfully formed women's lib groups on campuses in Massachusetts. Boston University, Northeastern University and Radcliffe College Fern Lib groups put forth five demands, the same being- voiced by other lib groups at other campuses nationally.

The demands: free child care center for faculty and staff; self- defenfe classes for women; women's studies (University of sod San Diego State reputedly have the 'best); a full-time gynecologist in the health center (demands for free birth control information and devices still persist in many colleges); and a woman's center. Equal admissions policies are being demanded by many women's lib groups. EVEN THE PRESIDENTIAL Task Force hit discrimination in admissions, based on sex, noting ft Is a fact that higher admission standards for women than for men are widespread in undergraduate schools and are even more discriminatory in graduate and professional schools. If the quotas based on sex were dropped; would be passible that women, ate sttartep than men or at least as ftnart, MAufiKtitfyer exceed in of mates and graduate and professional schools. Less than 1 six per cent of the country's law 'students arid-eight per cent of the medical students female, due to the quota system based on sex.

"This is despite the fact that women tend to do better than men on tests for admission to law and medical schools," says the U. S. Office of Education. will be held today in Orchestra Hall in order to raise funds to establish a national women's lobby in Washington, D. "Our other thrust is to get more women elected to office.

NOW will greatly support the Illinois Political Caucus of Women." STATEWISE, MANY women are unaware that the new Illinois constitution is the first in the nation with an Equal Rights Provision which went into effect Julyl. It is Sect. 18 of the new Constitution's Bill of Rights which states "that the equal protection of the law shall not be denied or abridged on account of sex by the State or its units of local government and school districts." This means that no law can be enacted or administrative practice introduced that treats citizens differently because of their sex. Existing laws or practices that do are unconstitutional and can be challenged in the courts on that basis. SECT.

18 IS COUPLED with Sect 17 which forbids discrimination on the basis of race, color, creed, national ancestry and sex in employment and the sale and rental of property. The new constitution represents an advancement but just how much is the question. "There is a problem of interpretation," said Mrs. Chapman. "There still can be discrimination against women.

It just means government cant discriminate, that equal protection of the law cannot be denied. "Now we have to ask, what does equal protection of the law mean? It takes going into court and that takes money," she continued "But if the statute were spelled out specifically, it would be less likely to be ignored." VARIOUS WOMEN, female-oriented organizations and assemblywomen pushed for legislation in regards to all areas of women's rights during the immediate past session of the Illinois legislature, Only two bills out of the host that were introduced, were finally passed. Both are expected to be signed shortly by the governor. HBllfi amends the Fair Employment Practice Act to prohibit discrimination based on sex. The other, a minimum wage bill includes a provision for "equal pay for equal work." If the governor signs these two bills, these measures will be enacted into law.

"We were pleased with the amendment to the FEP," said Miss Martin, "but we didn't get anything in abortion reform and appeal," she added in discussing how NOW felt about the past legislative FOUR ABORTION BILLS were introduced this session, and all but one have been defeated at this point SB748, a "straight 12-week bill," will be heard by the Senate Judiciary Committee in the fall. Also still in committee is a bill to create an Office of Women's Activities under the governor which would be dedicated to alleviating sex discrimination. A bill to remove prohibition against women receiving unemployment compensation during pregnancy was recommended a "do pass" by the Senate Committee on Labor and Commerce. It will be voted on in the Senate when the legislature reconvenes in October. HB2210 allowing married women to choose a surname for legal purposes was met with obvious humor and defeated on the floor of die General Assembly.

ALSO DEFEATED was an important package of labor legislation, (SB459-461), introduced by Sen. Esther Saperstein of Chicago. It provided for minimum wage, repeal of the Eight Hour Law for Women, voluntary overtime, equal pay for equal work, the prohibition of sex discrimination in employment and the establishment of a Wage and Hour Division in the Illinois Department of Labor. Of the five day care bills Introduced this past session, one was signed by the governor providing grants to needy centers in the state. "We are reaching the point where legislators don't want to be labeled anti- women.

They try to laugh it off, but now they are very uneasy and nervous about it," said Mrs. Chapman who introduced several of the bills relating to women's equality. "LEGISLATION HAS failed to provide justice," she continued. "Too many women do need their incomes. They are not just working for pin money and they are not going to stand seeing a man next door making more for the same amount of work.

"A number of steps nave been taken where we haven't been, successful in the past What we need to do now is go through laws with a fine tooth comb and i what contributes to discrimination," she said. "Nowhere does it say this is a discrimination against women. It's accepted because that's always the way tt has been done. If one could only work more with attitudes." Women Can Be Free, Feminine Too One Mag's Creed: Ladylike Lib by HELEN HENNESSY NEW YORK (NBA) There may" be some men who agree with Nietzsche that "woman was God's second mistake." And feeling that way one couldn't expect them to want us to be too "liberated." But menfolk of this bent are in the minority. And it must have come as a shock to the leaders of the humorless, militant crusade for Women's Lib to find that the majority of their critics are women.

Washington model Judy Black, who believes that women and men must work together for human rights for everyone, started her own countergroup to NOW and calls it TWO. It's growing by leaps and bounds. The younger girls in Women's Lib are disagreeing with the pioneers of the movement in their belief that the way to liberation is to hold political office. AND NOW, New Woman, a newcomer to the magazine field, is aimed, according to its editor-publisher Margaret Harold, at the thinking woman and takes the position that women are largely to blame for much of own limited opportunities in business. It also expresses concern over the degree to which men are blamed for the "shallows that exist in some women's lives." The magazine asserts that it would "certainly be improper to suggest that men be blamed even if marriage were a prison and women its prisoners -when so many women have tried so hard to maneuver men into marriage' and when so many men have tried so hard to avoid anything resembling a permanent attachment." It allows that there are economic and social factors that have, pressured some women into their quest for marriage but then asks, "Why are men being accused? For accommodating them?" So it would seem that feminine opposition to the militant cry of "mate chauvinist pig" is rearing its curly head in many quarters.

A- SPOKESMAN (or should it be spokeswoman?) for the new publication takes this position: "It can hardly be disputed that most women in the past really have followed like woolly sheep and worked only until they got married or bad babies. And even though it is true that many ambitious women have been unfairly victimized by being lumped into an all-women-are-alike category, it is also that countless other women achievers have managed to snag attention despite the antiwomen attitude. So the fault, dear Brutus, is not in our birth but in ourselves." The editors believe in the premise that being born female is rather a privilege. Hut too many women have suppressed their natural resources behind a veil of convention and some fools have seen all women in this distorted view of suppression. THE MOOD of the book is optimism.

Women don't have to be second class citizens unless they want to. And ft includes thought-inducing features that may help you to get your first class badge without unwomanly militance. For instance the July issue included such articles as "Double Standards That Women (and Men) Permit But Shouldn't," "Are You Legally Married Without Knowing which is a state- by-state guide to the laws governing common law marriage; "Women With Incomes Between $35,000 and $500,000," which tells of women who obviously aren't wooly litte sheep. And to top it off there's, a piece by comedienne Joan Rivers, called, "Are You Too Proud to Have Your Husband Work?" in which she turns the tables on the old mate concept of the "working woman" by declaring, "I was never one of those Neanderthal women who insisted a man's place was the home." So now we have a choice of at least three ways to get ourselves liberated if we feel the need. We can be militant and "Starve a rat tonight don't cook dinner." We can accept man as our ally and not our enemy and work together with nun for a freer, better life.

Or we can find the power within ourselves to become the equal of man. There's a blueprint available for each of the three roads. (Newspaper Enterprise Assn.) Organize Caucus Sept. 12 The statewide organizing conference of the Illinois Women's Political Caucus will be held in Champaign-Urbana Sept.12 As the state arm of the National Women's Political Caucus, the Illinois caucus will adhere to the national statement of purpose, which says in part that the "wffl rally support for the campaigns of women candidates federal, state, and local who declare themselves ready to fight for the needs of women and of all under-represented groups." Named as coordinators for the Illinois caucus are Verna Wittrock of Charleston and Phyllis Bere of Chicago. Those interested in attending may send a check for $5 as a registration fee to I.W.P.C., 7532 S.

Perry Chicago 6002L.