Document 9: Excerpt from Carolyn Kortge, "Schlafly Says Women's Movement Is Dying in an Anti-Feminist Surge," Eagle & Beacon, 3 August 1977. Reprinted in National Women's Conference Official Briefing Book: Houston, Texas, November 18 to 21, 1977 (Washington, D.C.: National Commission on the Observance of International Women's Year, 1977), p. 228.

Introduction

   Beginning in January 1976, Phyllis Schlafly[61] launched an attack on the NWC encouraging her supporters to demolish the feminist agenda of the conference and replace it with a "pro-family, pro-homemaker, pro-morality, pro-life image."[62] Schlafly led the successful fight to stop the passage of the ERA in the 1970s and early 1980s, largely through her organization Stop ERA, founded in 1972. Stop ERA's members mistakenly feared that the ERA would result in uni-sex bathrooms, open the way for the military to draft women, and undermine the family by removing legal requirements that fathers financially support their children.[63] Through her position as president of Stop ERA, and of the anti-feminist Eagle Forum, Schlafly mobilized support for an anti-feminist campaign to limit the effectiveness of the preliminary state conferences as well as the NWC in Houston. Schlafly spoke out against the NWC stating that it would bring about the end of the women's movement. She also believed that the preliminary state and territory conventions were directly responsible for a rise in the membership of her organizations, Stop ERA and Eagle Forum.

Schlafly Says Women's Movement Is Dying in an Anti-Feminist Surge
By CAROLINE KORTGE
Staff Writer

   Phyllis Schlafly, the woman who wields the national whip in a surging anti-feminist backlash said in Wichita Tuesday that the women's movement is in its final throes in America. She expects it to die in November.

   Schlafly, president of Stop ERA and founder of the anti-feminist group she calls the Eagle Forum, predicted that the national women's conference Nov. 18-21 in Houston will spell doom for a beleaguered women's movement.

   INTERNATIONAL Women's Year conferences held across the nation this summer have speeded the demise of the women's movement by showing the nation what the movement is about, Schlafly said during an interview and a news conference.

   Schlafly was in Wichita to attend a charter meeting of a Wichita chapter of the Eagle Forum—an organization she describes as "an alternative to women's lib."

   "It is completely apparent now that the women's lib movement means government-financed abortions, government-supported day care and lesbians teaching in our schools," Schlafly said.

   "When they pass a resolution saying lesbians ought to be able to teach in schools, you think that's going to enhance the women's movement? I think that's going to kill it."

   Across the nation, she said, women's conferences fostered a backlash that turned the meetings into political battles between feminists and their conservative opponents, and bolstered membership in such anti-feminists organizations as Stop ERA and the Eagle Forum.

   Impetus for the development of the Wichita chapter of Eagle Forum came at the July 15-17 Kansas Women's Weekend where a "pro-family" coalition supported by Stop ERA. Right to Life and some religious groups including Mormon, Baptist and Catholic women banded together to confront conference organizers and oppose resolutions supporting the Equal Rights Amendment, abortion and the rights of homosexuals.

   A small number of pro-ERA Wichitans protested Schlafly's news conference at the Canterbury Inn by carrying posters supporting the controversial amendment that would ban discrimination on the basis of sex.

   BUT SCHLAFLY IS accustomed to opposition—as the nation's foremost debater of anti-ERA viewpoints; she is unwavering in her defense of her position.

   "I don't think there's a single benefit to the ERA," she insisted, "Women today have complete freedom of choice. They can go into the work force or they can stay at home if they want. I think there's no class of people in the history of the world as fortunate as women today."

   Already, she said, the federal government may have gone too far by dictating equality for men and women in employment.

   "I do not think it was unfair of the telephone company to say that the job of answering telephones would be done largely by women and that the job of climbing the poles would be done largely by men," she said.

   "I think it's a recognition of the differences between men and women, but now the government won't allow that. When you fail to recognize differences, it causes all kinds of problems.

   "THERE ARE SOME physical facts you can't change. Women do have babies and men do have greater physical strength. I think it is unfair to women if you fail to recognize that."

   And equal employment legislation has created greater problems than finding women who want to climb poles and men who will work as operators, she said. It has encouraged unemployment, she contended.

   "Because homemakers are going into the work force, unemployment is increasing for men," Schlafly said. "The federal government is breathing down the necks of industry and forcing reverse discrimination in the hiring of less qualified women instead of men.

   "The ERA isn't going to provide employment for women. Only private industry can provide jobs and we already have high unemployment."

   The ERA isn't Schlafly's only target. Through Eagle forum she has expanded her political range and her following by taking on abortion, federally funded day care, homosexuality and government intervention in the family and private enterprise.

   The Eagle Forum, she said, "confronts the whole gamut of women's issues where we felt the American people needed to have an alternative presented."

   THE ORGANIZATION has enjoyed a surge of new growth this summer, she said, and counts more than 50,000 members, men and women, across the nation.

   Sylvia Turnis, a leader in the local "pro-family" coalition and a member of Stop ERA in Wichita, was named to head the local Eagle Forum chapter.

   

Previous Document	Document List	Next Document