Document 60: "Speech by Congresswoman Margaret M. Heckler, Third Plenary Session," in National Commission on the Observance of International Women's Year, The Spirit of Houston: The First National Women's Conference (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1978), pp. 226-27.

Margaret Heckler. From The Spirit of Houston: The First National Women's Conference, p. 246.

p. 226

SPEECH BY CONGRESSWOMAN MARGARET M. HECKLER

THIRD PLENARY SESSION
NOVEMBER 19, 1977

   Picture a young law school graduate, one who had been published in the Law Review, one who was well qualified as a beginning lawyer.

   She answered an advertisement for a part-time legal opportunity and was interviewed by the hiring partner. She was told: "Your credentials are excellent, but we would never hire you. You're a mother. You can't be serious about being a lawyer."

   I was that young lawyer and young mother. I am still a mother. I am still a Godloving, pro-family woman. I am a member of the Commission on the Observance of International Women's Year. I am a Member of Congress and a vigorous supporter of the Equal Rights Amendment. Those qualifications are not incompatible.

   If each of you sketched a profile of herself, she would portray characteristics that identify the self-uniqueness of each one of us.

   This Conference reflects the women of this country, with their differing personalities, varying backgrounds, different philosophies, and various goals. This Conference offers and opportunity for the sharing of our uniqueness and our diversity. It is not a melting pot; it is a potpourri.

   We have a similar situation in Congress, where 15 of the women members have joined together to form the Congresswomen's Caucus. I have the honor of chairing the caucus with my distinguished colleague, Congresswoman Elizabeth Holtzman of New York.

   The caucus transcends political, philosophical, and regional viewpoints in the sharing of information about the problems of women. It is moving on many fronts—to correct inequities in the laws as they relate to women.

   The women in Congress united a week ago to win veterans' benefits for a group of women pilots who had been struggling 33 years to achieve those benefits despite their obvious qualifications to receive them.

   This underscores a basic political lesson that there is no limit to what women can achieve when they work together. This Conference will deal with a potpourri of issues. The question in my mind is this: What is the lowest common denominator among the needs of women in America? My answer is: economic equality.

   What has Congress done to encourage economic equality? The Equal Pay Act, in effect since 1963, is enforced by the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. When it was passed, women represented one-third of the work force and earned 60 percent of the wages of men. Today women comprise 56 percent of the work force and earn 57 percent of the wages of men.

   It is a fact, sad enough to make me shudder, that the EEOC has a backlog of 130,000 cases. This was brought home to me dramatically when a woman sought my help during office hours in my district. She is a 57-year-old college professor. She has done all the rights things—published in professional journals, represented her institution in the community.

   Yet she earns $10,000 a year less than her male colleagues. This woman has filed a complaint with the EEOC, but there is no guarantee it will be adjudicated within her working years.

   Social security legislation is replete with sex discrimination. The married woman realizes few benefits from her social security payments because she can only collect from one account, usually her husband's. Therefore, she loses the contribution she has made to the social security system—billions of dollars.

   I sponsored and worked vigorously to achieve passage of the Equal Credit Opportunity Act to prohibit discrimination on the basis of sex or marital status. But that act is not vigorously enforced.

p. 227

   These are the facts. One might suggest: Why not ask Congress to change the laws and impose enforcement? As a Congresswoman with 11 years of experience, I am here to report to you that it will take too many Congresses to amend the existing laws and achieve the equality we seek.

   Although I respect my colleagues in Congress and I respect the institution itself. I know there are too many issues facing Congress. There is not sufficient commitment on the part of Congress to place women's issues in the forefront.

   Furthermore, these laws, no matter how well intentioned, are mere band-aid solutions. Women will not achieve true equality—equal justice under the law—until we have a constitutional basis for that equality. Only the Equal Rights Amendment can do that.

   Comparing the ERA with these piecemeal solutions reminds me of the beginnings of the age of flight, when individuals first attempted to fly, strapping wings to their backs, flapping their arms, inventing contraptions which they felt would enable them to soar, like the creatures of the air. But these devices barely got off the ground. It was only when the inventors added the engine—the power—to the emerging structure that the flying machine began to succeed. The surge of power propelling the wings lifted it up, above the forces that held it earthbound.

   The Equal Rights Amendment is the power of constitutional protection that will allow women's equality to become airborne. Without the ERA, women's equality will continue to flap its wings, making small leaps forward, struggling against the forces that hold us down. With the ERA, we will have the power, the constitutional foundation to soar above our current limitations, limitations which have bound us to limited choice of opportunity.

   There must be greater commitment if we are to pass the ERA. Your commitment to constitutional action can awaken the conscience of the country and of those who hold the power to ratify the ERA.

   A country that can put men on the moon can put women in the Constitution. If we really believe in the inscription engraved on the Supreme Court building, equal justice under law, the ERA is the only way to achieve it. Put your power behind the ERA—now!

   

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