Isn’t this the pay raises amendment? The one that was proposed way back when and just ratified by enough states just recently?
An interesting story, actually.
Yeah, but look how long it took that one to get ratified.
Even if there is absolutely no discrimination against women now, that’s no guarantee that there won’t be discrimination against women at some point in the future. If nothing else, it strikes me that the ERA would do good as a means of securing equality for future generations of women, should society begin to shift away from the wide spread acceptance of gender equality we currently enjoy.
Really? I’d like to see a citation of such a law. As I understand it, women in executive positions, when they can get them, are routinely paid less than a man could expect for the same job. If I’m wrong, I’d like you to prove it to me.
I’ve been out of the full-time work force for more than ten years now, but when I worked for a major corporation manufacturing a product necessary for both military and commercial uses, the standard pay for women was still significantly lower than that for men in the same or similar jobs. There’s a reason they call it the good old BOY network.
Educate me. I’m getting old and need the stiumulation.
The point to the intermediate level of scrutiny was to avoid the result that strict scrutiny would have imposed in gender discrimination cases. This is because the justices recognized that, while there is generally no valid reason to discriminate on the basis of race, there may well be valid (meaning societally acceptable and morally justifiable) reasons to differentiate application of the law based upon gender. However, strict scrutiny would preclude such discrimination except when a compelling state interest was involved, and no other method for addressing that interest could be used. As strict scrutiny was being applied at the time, that would, in essence, have precluded any laws which differentiated their application on the basis of gender.
Now, if the Supreme Court of the United States was forced, either by amendment, or by adoption sua sponte, to accept that gender was a protected class requiring strict scrutiny, then the justices would face Hobson’s choice: either refuse to allow gender discrimination in any case, paralelling the application of the test to racial discrimination cases, or start finding that there was a compelling state interest in gender discrimination, which, of course, creates a crack in the otherwise usually monolithic approach to strict scrutiny cases. It might not make much difference anyway, given that “strict scrutiny” is and has been under assault for a decade or so and might go the way of the dodo anyway. But certainly, application of that test to an area where, society agrees, it is permissible to treat the genders differently before the law, would result in the degredation of the test.
Which gets me back to my original statement. It matters not what the promoters “intend.” Strict scrutiny was adopted by the Court at a time when it was fashionable at the federal level to treat any and all racial discrimination as anathema (rightfully so). It was a legal test intended to make clear that there was almost no valid reason to discriminate against people on the basis of race or national origin (the test, as applied to equal protection, actually comes out of the Korematsu case, which upheld the detention of Japanese Americans on the theory that there was, indeed, a compelling state interest to do so). The test was aggressively applied with regard to racial discrimination cases in the 50’s and 60’s. Despite the fact that many in society have argued that it should be applied to other categorizations, the Court has persistently refused to apply it beyond certain “fundamental rights” and “suspect classes.” Since it is a Court adopted concept, it will only be applied to gender issues upon adoption of an ERA if the Court decides to do so (unless, of course, the test was written into the amendment). Given that the same approbrium does not exist regarding all attempts to classify on the basis of gender, the likelihood is small that passage of an ERA would result in adoption of “strict scrutiny” when testing constitutionality of laws under such an amendment. IMHO. 
Zoe,
Your post is stoital non sequitur. Nobody disputes that women fail to reach higher levels as often or as fast as men. And nobody disputes that women don’t work as many hours, they don’t work as many years, they are much less prone to taking high risk or arduous jobs and so forth. Fact one is a result of fact 2. As far as anyone has been able to establish it has nothing to do with discrimination. Once we control for those factors there is no significant disparity between men and women in terms of promotion or income.Yet when asked for evdience that the disparity is caused by discrimination the first thing you do is provide examples that estbalish what we all accept: that women fail to reach higher levels as often or as fast as men. Total non sequitur.
dgrdfd did such a good job of debunking what you posted that I need not say any more. Essentially it seems that you failed to read what I posted.
I’m here to please: http://www.eeoc.gov/policy/epa.html. It’s been the law since 1963.
Thanks for the cite. I shouldn’t be surprised that there is a law . . . and that it is frequently ignored or skirted in one way or another. Companies and corportaions routinely ignore the law regarding age discrimination, too, although proof is hard to come by and cases rarely get to court. The company can always claim its decision was made for some other reason.
Yes, but until the government stepped in . . .
Henry ford also had unionizers brutally attacked for distributing information to his workers.
Bill Gates was using anticompetitive means to maintain a monopoly
I could go on, but I think you get my drift. Government, not business looks out for the rights of individuals. Government, not business, passed the 1906 Food and Drugs Act and the Meat Inspection Act on the same day. “Shocking disclosures of insanitary conditions in meat-packing plants, the use of poisonous preservatives and dyes in foods, and cure-all claims for worthless and dangerous patent medicines were the major problems leading to the enactment of these laws.” Government, not business passed the United States Housing Act of 1937 and the Fair Housing Act of 1967 to prevent business from profiting from unsafe housing and discriminatory practices. And, of course regulating the safety and fair play of the variety of things that make our life livable.
Yes, we need this now. I am damned sick of dealing with institutional sexism–from the bitch at the bank telling me that the husband’s name has to come first on all paperwork, to the hoops that men are made to go through in some states should they want to change their name to their wife’s last name at marriage. I even find that often businesses still do not give me equal access to joint accounts opened in both my and my husband’s name. The ERA is simple enough and high enough to use as a cudgel to make these assholes stop.
Yes it is you forgot #19 in your list.
Amendment XIX
The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any state on account of sex.
Congress shall have power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation.
Government, just as often, infringes on the rights of individuals. Just look at any of the PATRIOT Act provisions, the variety of eminent domain cases, regulations that take away the value of property, etc.
My point is that businesses, not government, have produced the things that make our life better. Government has a place in setting up a basic legal framework, but government itself does not create the things that help us every day. I know that liberals love to think that businesses are evil and just out to exploit us, but that’s simply not the case. Businesses profit when they give people what they want. It’s a simple concept that is lost on many. Businesses have an incentive to make better products and offer services that make people’s lives easier and more comfortable. Doing so is the only way they make money.
ISTM? I agree with the first paragraph, but not the second. I would amend the first paragraph to add the following: An explicit statement of the principle is obviously needed if the principle has been ignored in the past, and trying to state that principle met with significant opposition and legal debate. Or did things like women’s suffrage in the US happen automatically and were a great majority of legal scholars immediately on board? Correct me if I’m wrong here.
I’m sure that no one here is arguing that men and women are not fundamentally equal. I see more arguments along the lines that everything is fine now, so why worry about it? I am somewhat surprised at this tendency. I always thought there was truth to the expression “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.” Just because it doesn’t happen now doesn’t mean that it is impossible to conceive this country denying equality in the future.
I had never worked employment law, this would almost be humorous. The procedures in place, as well as organizations like the EEOC, make it very, very easy to sue an employer for sexual discrimination. Likewise, a whole industry has propped up just to deal with defenses against the likelihood of lawsuit.
The primary incentive of a business is to maximize profit - produce a good as cheaply as possible and sell it as dearly as possible. Easier and more comfortable is by far not in the first place.
The only way? How about the successful method of attaining a monopoly and preventing any smaller company from entering your market?
Perhaps not, but to make money, they must sell a good that people want. I don’t think people choose goods and services that make their lives more difficult and more uncomfortable.
Sure, and to do this you need to have the government behind you. The only succesful monopolies are the ones that have the government backing them up. Monopolies do not exist without government force.
We are veering off the topic here, but my impression is that recent examples like Microsoft show the contrary. This should probably be a new thread however.
I don’t think Microsoft was a monopoly in any real sense of the word. As you say, though, this is probably veering off topic, so perhaps we’d better leave it to another thread.
Who was that British MP candidate who used to ask “Why is there only one Commission on Monopolies?”
The 27th had lain there unratified since 1789 [sic], one of the 12 amendments proposed as part of the Bill of Rights in fact, and was put over the top only by a fluke. Congress figured out a work-around anyway. Before that, the last amendment was ratified in 1971 (voting age 18).
What I was referring to is the notion that has become common since that progressive period that the Constitution is a sort of holy writ, handed down to us by a kind of superior lifeform called The Framers, to be worshiped and obeyed but never questioned. That attitude is not limited to the idolators of the second half of the Second Amendment, of course, but they’ve played a major role in spreading it. C’mon, people, even its own writers expected and even wanted it to be fixed when problems were found and solutions generally agreed upon, even to the point of chucking it and writing a better one from scratch.
There’s also the widespread attitude that it’s hard work to change it, so why bother, let’s just finagle our way around the parts we don’t like, or just ignore them altogether. *That * shit has got to stop, too.