Steve Frey
Virginia’s decisions have been crucial throughout the history of the United States in many ways. On this very day in 1791, Virginia was the eleventh state in the country to ratify the amendments to the Constitution that came to be called the Bill of Rights, thus making these measures the law across the land.
The Bill of Rights, of course, prohibits the federal government from abridging the freedoms of religion, speech, the press and many other rights that Americans sometimes take for granted.
Now jump forward a little over 200 years. Virginia is once again in a position to be decisive in amending the Constitution. This time it is with the Equal Rights Amendment. If Virginia approves the ERA, joining 37 states that have already adopted it, it will ensure equal rights for women throughout America.
The Radford City Council helped Virginia move closer to approval by unanimously adopting a proclamation in support of the Equal Rights Amendment at its last meeting.
What does the ERA say? Simply: “Equality of rights under the law shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any state on account of sex.”
If you are a woman, don’t you want to have the same rights and protections as men for yourself and your daughters? If you are a man, don’t you want your daughters, sisters, wives, girlfriends (any relation) to have the same rights as you? Those should be rhetorical questions; of course you do.
Radford can be proud to have a city council that sees the clear and present need and approved this proposal unanimously. It is hard to believe that the commonwealth hasn’t already joined those 37 other states in enacting this law in the years since it was first passed by the U.S. Senate in 1972. Virginia should approve it now.
Why is this needed? Well, everyone has heard of the “glass ceiling,” which has prevented many women from reaching the highest levels of both the government and the corporate world. Here are some more compelling facts:
Women with full-time jobs still earn only about 77 cents for every dollar of their male counterparts’ earnings. Worse, African-American women earn 64 cents and Latina women make only 56 cents (a little more than half) of every dollar earned by a Caucasian man.
On average, almost a third of women who have been in a relationship report that they have experienced some form of physical or sexual violence by a partner.
In 2016, women service members reported 6,172 cases of sexual assault.
By 2020, there will be 1.4 million open technology jobs in the U.S. and, at the current rate of students graduating with degrees in computer science, men will outnumber women 4 to 1 (note that women make up 50.8 percent of the population).
As of early 2017, 223 colleges in the United States had a total of 304 pending Title IX sexual violence investigations (quadrupled from 2014).
Women currently hold only 4.8 percent of the CEO positions at S&P 500 companies.
Holding 105 of 535 seats between the Senate and the House of Representatives, women make up 19.6 percent of Congress.
Last year, one in eight women in the U.S. lived in poverty, for a total of 16.9 million people. The numbers were even higher for single mothers, with a little over one in three single mothers in poverty. The increased likelihood of women living in poverty includes their children as well, with 56.2 percent of impoverished children living in female-led households in 2015.
In 2006, the U.S. was third in the world for economic gender equality, but in 2016 it had fallen to 26th, a very significant drop over a period of ten years.
At least three women are murdered every day by a boyfriend or husband in America.
About 42 percent of employed women say they have experienced some form of gender discrimination at work.
The average full-time working woman will lose more than $460,000 over 40 years in wages due only to the male-female wage gap. To catch up, she will need to work 12 additional years.
Again, do you want your daughter to face this type of discrimination? There is no valid reason not to address this cultural and historical problem; in fact, it is long overdue. Remember, the essence of the law is that “equality of rights…shall not be denied or abridged…on account of sex.” That’s it. It merely states that no one can discriminate based on sex, and it gives women fair redress under the law to address such discrimination.
It is time for the citizens of Virginia to create a groundswell of support for this amendment and for the legislature to overwhelmingly approve it to ensure that all Americans possess equal rights under the Constitution.
Women of all ages in the New River Valley, Virginia and the United States of America deserve nothing less.
Steve Frey is a writer and CEO of Ascendant Educational Services based in Radford.
