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Why The ERA Means Little to Our Daughters
I can almost hear the clinking of wine glasses with kiddy cocktails as mothers and daughters celebrate their new official equality under the constitution. I live in Illinois, one of the two states that ratified the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA) — the bill that, if passed, would guarantee our daughters access to reproductive health care, equal pay, and other rights that make life easier and more egalitarian — after four decades of dormancy. In March, more than 20 senators reintroduced the bill. And now the US women’s soccer team — World Cup champions for the second consecutive time — is offering a stark example of equal work for vastly unequal pay, perhaps giving the ERA its biggest chance for revival in years.
I should be excited. I am excited but also a little depressed. My friend’s 13-year-old daughter, Darcy, told her the other day that a boy at school was covertly looking up girls’ skirts with his phone camera. He managed to snap a picture of her underwear that happened to have a fairy on it. Apparently there’s a word for this — upskirting — indicating it’s not totally uncommon. That’s the gross part, not the depressing part. The depressing part is the humiliation her daughter felt for “letting” it happen (somehow the other girls had evaded it) and that she was outed for owning little-girl panties.
Passing the ERA is certainly much more than symbolic, yet it will barely make a dent in the immediate climate of routine objectification and degradation our girls face. Indeed, it might add to the dissonance they experience between so-called equality and the daily doses of sexism and harassment that chip away at their sense of safety and self.
Adults can bridge that gap.
Amid the Women’s March and #MeToo, we might think the meaning and impact of sexism would be obvious. It’s not. Unless it’s violent or illegal, we’ve left girls adrift on matters of sex and boundaries and it’s causing real harm. As a psychologist, I see this in many children but most dramatically in our girls.
Only about half of 1,000 girls recently surveyed said the #MeToo movement made them feel they could tell someone about sexual harassment. And research shows that 7 out of 10 girls will be harassed before they leave high school. Why will they stay silent?
