Florida, Iowa Voters Ponder Women’s Equality Measures

Iowa state Rep. Minnette Doderer has chalked up many accomplishments in a 34-year legislative career, but she thinks the list has one notable blank spot: no Equal Rights Amendment for women.

“I’ve always said I want it to be in the Constitution before I die,” the 75-year-old Democrat from Iowa City says. “A worthy goal.”

Doderer’s time may have come. State measures acknowledging women’s equality have been shot down repeatedly since 1976, and a federal ERA failed in 1982, but chances are good that proposals in Iowa and Florida will pass Nov. 3.

Polls look favorable in Florida, and both state political parties back Iowa’s ballot question.

Supporters say the idea of women’s equality has grown less frightening and has broader support in society today. The wording of the measures is different too. Rather than explicitly stating that women are equal to men, the Florida and Iowa ballot questions simply insert a reference to women in the basic rights provisions of the state constitutions.

Florida’s ERA proposal also bans discrimination based on national origin. In Utah, voters are being asked if they want to keep a constitutional provision that protects a woman’s assets from going to pay her husband’s debts. In South Carolina, the question is whether to abolish a constitutional ban on interracial marriage.

ERA proponents say that, although women have made great progress toward equality in the last quarter-century, the measures have real and theoretical importance. The constitutions of 16 states acknowledge the equal rights of women--all in place before 1976, according to the National Organization for Women.

NOW President Patricia Ireland said state ERAs are important in a time when groups like the Promise Keepers, a Christian men’s group, and the Southern Baptists seek to consign women to traditional roles.

Defeating the state ERA is one of the Christian Coalition of Florida’s priorities because the group believes it could lead to legalizing same-sex marriages. Gay marriage proponents in Alaska and Hawaii have won legal battles based on equal rights language in state constitutions.