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.
