Cspan dot org slash history. Good evening everybody. Im Betsy Fischer martin the executive director of the women in Politics Institute at American University and good evening everybody. I am betsy fisher martin, director of the women in Politics InstituteAmerican University. Welcome to our virtual series, women on wednesdays. We are glad that you could join us. If this if you who have been to our events, w pei is a non partisan institute of Public Affairs that aims to chose the close the gender gap in political leadership. We offer academic and practical campaign training, and we facilitates research and discussions like this on women in politics. So, tonight, we want to take a look at all the way back 100 years to the era right after the ratification and passage of the 19th amendment. Because, understandably, the fight for womens equality did not stop with the success of the suffrage movement. There was more to do and that is what, our discussion will center on this evening with dr. Rebecca wolf. Who has written an amazing new book. It is intended lured entitled gendered citizen ship, the original conflict over the equal rights rights amendment. 1920 to 1963. And, dr. Doug wulf is a historian who wrote her ph. D. Right here in American University. And we are proud that she is also a w upi Course Instructor the semester teaching a class on this very subject. And i am sure we have a few of her students joining us this evening. Im going to let everybody know before we start that we are going to save plenty of time for your questions. At the bottom of the screen you will see the ask the question button. Please, dont be shy. Feel free to type your question in there and you can also upload other peoples questions that you may be interested in. And if you miss any other discussion tonight and want to share it with friends the replay will be available at the same link that you used to register. So, rebecca, thanks for being here. I am very excited to be here. Thank you for having me. Of course. So we have a lot to cover. This book is amazing. First i will say that when i really enjoyed about the book is that it is sort of a twofer you have an academic component, obviously, with lots of footnotes and references, and sources, but it also reads really really well and is super interesting to read. So i think it is for two audiences. So, anyway, i would recommend anybody who is interested in the subject to grab a copy of rebeccas book. As you can, see theres a green link on the screen and theres even a special Discount Code in the chat if you wanted to buy it. But let me start with two kind of scenes. The first being such on you, secondly for how you as a student of history really decided to study this particular time period in the history of the e. R. A. Because i will note that, if you are with us tonight and you are thinking, was in the fight over the er a really in the 70s with Gloria Steinem . You are probably not alone if you think that. That earlier era is really not written about, nearly to the extent that the liter era of course and the battle has been. So tell us by this moment in history is particularly important . So, that is a really great question and i am going to just start off with how i became interested in the er i to give a little bit of foundation. So just a step back, this book is based off of my ph. D. Dissertation research. I first came to the er a my first day of my phd program. So 2008, 2009. And i will just say things with the e. R. A. Were much different than they were back then they are today. Theres more support for it, and more knowledge about it. But at this earlier time theres really just a general lack of knowledge about the e. R. A. So i came to the topic because my phd adviser at the time, alan lichtman, asked me to give a lecture on the e. R. A. For a class that i was the seating assistant for. So i got into the research. At that point i was like, this is an interesting topic. But we really got me going is, after i get the lecture i opened it up to the classroom discussion and some of the students said that they had no idea that the er a wasnt ratified. So that was interesting. But i consider will matter the scene said something along the lines of, yeah we recognize that there is still persistent sex discrimination against women, but we dont see the e. R. A. As a solution to that problem. So that just set off a lightning bolt of curiosity for me. Why had in the recognition of persistent sex discrimination not cause more of a robust push for the e. R. A. . So i really wanted to solve it seems like a disconnect between realizing that there is still ongoing problems in society that are Holding Women back, but not thinking that the e. R. A. Is the solution to that problem. So around this time, i should also say that i had to read a book for a graduate course called. It is Susan Douglas is where the girls are. It is a great book on the history of womens, the history of medias portrayal of women. And she has great insightful discussion of the e. R. A. In the 1970s as representing the classic catfight imagery that we so often see with how women are portrayed in the media. So this depicts woman is constantly fighting with each other, emotional, just cant get along. And the implicit piece suggestion from this imagery is that this is why women arent fit for leadership positions. And so that strongly influenced my perspective. I want to get away from the catfight industry, i wanted to see if and why the area which struck woods represent more than just a struggle between. Women at first i was just interested in all parts of the e. R. A. As writing on the graduate papers on, it being quite obsessive about him. But i think a more drawn to the earliest years of the conflict because as you mentioned, very little is written about it. And it just seems like a mysterious part of the e. R. A. s history. Because so many of the dividing lines that you see in u. S. History just dont play out the same way as the original area conflict. What i mean by that is you have conservative and liberals on both sides of the issue. You have many women on both sides of the issue, feminism on both sides of the issue. So it is just not an easy conflict to figure with a dividing lines where because you are seeing overlaps everywhere. So, i really want to understand what was going on, why does the original theory conflict calling to question so many of our conceptual ways of thinking about trends in u. S. History. And another thing to say about the joint year conflicts is, individuals that we typically share as champions of human rights, like Eleanor Roosevelt. She oppose the e. R. A. And people like francis perkins, the first secretary, first women secretary of labor who is typically cast as a hero and womens history. She also oppose the e. R. A. So just begs the question of, what is really going on . [interpreter] what is motivating people to be opposed to it or to support it. So i really wanted to figure with the dividing line was. And we are going to talk about some of those whats those dividing lines were and sort of the strange bed fellows that came together before it or against it. But i do want to you set the scene on whats life was like for women after the passage of the 19th amendment in 1920. Of course, they now than have the right to vote, but little else in terms of rights. And of course we know women of color really didnt even have the right to vote. So, tell us what life was like in terms of rights for women after suffrage . Okay, so that is a great question. And before we get into life after the 19th amendment, the ways in which the 19th amendment serve as a spring port for the conflicts. I was in the main argument i book so the people understand how i am getting at it. So the main argument is that the original conflict created gendered citizenship of the United States. So even though the 19th amendment disrupted the traditional understanding of u. S. Citizenship that gave many 30 over women, and, law and custom, disparities between men and womens positions persisted because e. R. A. Opponents, and the original e. R. A. Conflict, modernized or updated the justification for sex specific treatment in the original conflict. So, to unpack it a little bit to get your question about what women were facing after the 19th amendment, it isnt going to recognize that the u. S. Legal system was founded on a profound commitment to the mildness of rights bearing citizenship. So u. S. Authorities understood white women, and after the civil war, black women. To be citizens. And that theyre habitants of the country. When we came to being a fool citizen entering the rights of citizenship, u. S. Laws and customs tonight women that status of rights varying citizenship because u. S. Legal and political authorities believed that all women were inherently dependents, weak creatures who relied on others, especially men for survival. So im not gonna go fully into all that legal history. If anyone is curious that really dive into the first chapter my book. But is important understand that the original masculine conception of full u. S. Edison ship date mandatory to over women and law and custom. And it is also important to understand the category of sex was commonly used as a valid reason to restrict womens opportunities and autonomy in the home and in public life. So, before and after the 19th amendment, there were an array of sex specific laws and policies that denied orlimited womens right to hold Public Office, serve hundreds, work in certain occupations, even have an independent nationality status. And theyre also an array of sex based laws and customs that continued to favor husbands over. Sorry, continue to favor husbands and fathers over wives and daughters, with regard to property, earning, contracting, inheritance, and guardianship rates. So, when the 19th amendment was passed in 1920, when it is a removed sex as a valid reason for with only the right to vote. So for those that dont know, the actual language of the 19th amendment, im going to try to say it off the top of my head here. Was something along the lines of, the rights of a u. S. Citizen to vote cannot be a bridge or tonight in the count of sex. And the implicit suggestion with that wording is that it affirmed womens right to vote. But because it removed sex isabella reason for restricting the right to vote, it raised all these other questions about okay, well can sex be a valid reason still for limiting and restricting all these other rights like the right to serve on juries and hold Public Office. So, a lot of debates and questions arose in the week of the 19th amendment regarding womens legal status Going Forward. A lot of debates concerned, okay well but really constitutional ramifications and effects of the 19th amendment . Where there implications beyond the vote . Do women have broader Political Rights now . And underlining all these questions were, whether the rights of citizenship after all . Should women still be held to a different legal status or should they be held to the same status as many Going Forward . And something that i kind of touch upon in the piece that i wrote for gender on the ballot was about how some of these arguments played out with regard to womens right to hold Public Office even after the 19th amendment there were some restrictions on womens rights to hold Public Office. So, the concerns in the debates about the transformative possibilities of the 19th amendment played out in the political discourse of the 19 twenties and in several court cases. And for the purpose of my book, what you see is those debates over when the 19th amendment meant a vault into the regional conflict over the equal rights amendment as two different interpretations as of u. S. Citizenship developed. So, if you want i can touch upon how this brings in alice paul. Yeah. Because i was going to ask you about her. I mean, obviously, we had spent the whole 2020 talking about the suffrage centennial, talk about suffragettes, and i think people familiar with alice pauls role in all of that. But she plays a big role in this as well. Tell us more . Absolutely. So, as all these questions are going on about what is womens legal status, whether the nature of rights now that women have implicitly the right to vote. A group of individuals, which alex paul was the leader of, decided that an additional constitutional amendment was needed in order to resolve these issues regarding womens legal status. So, i will just give a little background on alice paul in case people arent familiar. So alice paul was an incredibly influential suffrage leader, as you said. Some scholars described her as representing more of the militant side of the suffrage movement. So she is famous for, she founded the National Womens party, and w p, and she and her party are famous for picketing the white house for a political cause, the cause of suffrage. They were arrested when they were picketing the white house, and jailed. They did a Hunger Strike in jail for the cause of suffrage and then they were force fed. She was well known for orchestrating in organizing the massive and spectacular suffrage parade in washington d. C. In 1913 around president wilsons inaugural celebration. So alice paul was a brilliant strategist for capturing the attention of the press in the overall public to because of suffrage. So, as all of these questions are going on in the wake of the 19th amendment, alice paul and her very good friend alcee hill, another leader of the National Womens party got together with a up incoming legal scholar by the name of Albert Levitt of the George Washington university. He was already working on trying to scare womens rights in certain areas. They got together in the spring of 1921 to try to figure what to do to resolve these issues around womens rights. And i just want to say, so they came to the idea of an initial got social amendment. But first, this additional constitutional amendment was really more of like a clarifying amendment, to really kind of clarify what womens rights should be Going Forward. So, it wasnt at this point embracing the complete constitutional quality that you would see in the er and later on. So, Albert Levitt also actually wrote the first draft of this clarifying amendment and it was very lengthy. He literally wrote every single write that they were trying to get for women, like the right to serve on juries, hold Public Office, havent independently status, things of that nature. And at that point things just really took off. Alex paul really wanted this drafting process to be collaborative and a shared effort. So she consciously went out and brought people into the drafting process. So there was an array of individuals involved, which i tried to capture in chapter two of my book. Microscope hound, he rode up some drafts. Albert levitt said he wrote 35 different drafts. Alice paul wrote a couple hundred different drafts. Lets see, who else was involved . Dean acheson who would go on to be an influential Foreign Policy adviser for president s, he wrote a couple drops and give some advice. So some lawyers within the nwa p helped. Out so just a very collaborative effort and it is really great to go through the sources and see all the different ideas at play. But things started to break down. In the fall of 1921 the collaborative effort kind of fell apart. Well i definitely fell apart. So the main reason that it fell apart is because some of the people involved wanted the clarifying amendment to include a provision that would secure what they believed to be womens natural right to special protection. And at this point, alice paul wasnt against this idea, but she wasnt for. It should kind of on the fence about it all. And when she wouldnt commit to it, and im just summarizing a very complicated history which i go into a more detail my book, but when she wouldnt commit to that saving clouds, or this clause to protect women. Or protect what was believed to be a womans natural right to special protection, the individuals committed to that ideas that alice paul, youre on your own were not gonna help you anymore. And it is actually quite a dramatic and emotional breakdown. Albert levitt and alice paul got in the humongous fight, because he was one of the people who want to the saving close. And it was very distrustful for alice paul. So at that point, she decided to put the amendment on hold. So this was the winter of 1921. And she launched with the National Womens party, a Major Investigation into the legal status of women. Which really took off in january 1922. And so, it is important to understand this Massive Research project because it really gets to the idea of what were women facing in the early 19 twenties in terms of legalized sex discrimination. So, so many of the problematic laws restricting womens autonomy and opportunities where on the state level. And they vary from state to state. So it is a very confusing patchwork of laws. And when alice paul was thinking was, okay lets go and investigate these laws. Lets record, then lets chronicle them, lets see if any of them are beneficial for women or if they are all harmful. And so, within this Massive Research project, which really lasted in the 1920s up until the early 1930s. The nwa p wrote several reports throughout this time. But it was through this process that the n w p became way more critical of the idea of sex specific treatment, and sex specific laws and more attached to the idea of complete constitutional sexual quality. And i just want to say, some of the things that they found in a reports on the sex specific laws that were harmful for women. Some of the reports that they showed i think it was in 40 different states, property acquired through the joint effort of husband and wife still primarily belong to the husband. In several states they still had husbands controlling womens earnings, several states still proh