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As a member of our Unitarian Universalist congregation's worship committee, I occasionally fill in for the minister when he's out of town. This is my sermon for today, March 8, International Women's Day.
According to U.S. Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, “Every constitution written since the end of World War II includes a provision that men and women are citizens of equal stature. Ours does not.”
The Equal Rights Amendment, which was written in 1923, still has not been included in the Constitution of the United States. This is what it says:
Section 1. Equality of rights under the law shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any state on account of sex.
Section 2. The Congress shall have the power to enforce, by appropriate legislation, the provisions of this article.
Section 3. This amendment shall take effect two years after the date of ratification.
Incidentally, our neighboring state of Virginia is one of the 15 states that have not ratified the ERA. Three more states need to ratify it so that it can become law.
Chalice Lighting –
I light the Chalice today for all the little girls in the world who are forbidden to attend school, and who may face threats and violence for trying to get an education. May they be able to study and learn in peace.
Sermon – Is Women’s Work Finally Done?
Happy International Women’s Day!
This February 28 was the 100th anniversary of the first time the holiday was celebrated around the United States. It’s a holiday with some rather exciting history.
On March 8, 1908, 15,000 women marched through New York City demanding shorter work hours, better pay, voting rights and an end to child labor. They adopted the slogan "Bread and Roses", with bread symbolizing economic security and roses a better quality of life. In May of that year, the Socialist Party of America designated the last Sunday in February as National Women's Day.
In 1911, International Women's Day was celebrated in Austria, Denmark, Germany and Switzerland. More than one million women and men attended rallies campaigning for women's rights to work, vote, be trained, to hold public office and end discrimination.
The holiday continued to spread, and in 1917 Russian women began a strike for "bread and peace" in response to the death over 2 million Russian soldiers in war. Despite opposition, they continued to strike until four days later the Czar was forced to abdicate and the provisional government granted women the right to vote. This day, March 8 in our calendar, is now International Women’s Day.
It is an official holiday in China, Armenia, Russia, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Bulgaria, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Macedonia, Moldova, Mongolia, Tajikistan, Ukraine, Uzbekistan and Vietnam. The United Nations adopted it as a holiday in 1975. While not an official holiday, it is celebrated in many other countries, including the United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, India, Germany and France. We don’t hear about it very much in the U.S., probably because of Cold War paranoia about socialists and communists.
I was somewhat surprised when the first bill signed by President Barack Obama turned out to be a law requiring that women get paid the same amount as men for equal work. I thought all that stuff was taken care of ages ago. It turns out I was wrong.
This new bill reversed a 2007 US Supreme Court decision that made it harder to sue for pay discrimination. Lilly Ledbetter, the Goodyear tire supervisor whose pay discrimination case against her firm went all the way to the Supreme Court, lost $223,776 in lifetime earnings compared to what she would have been paid if she were a man. On the average, American women lose $434,000 over their lifetime, compared to male counterparts in the same jobs. In the legal profession, the pay gap is $1.48 million. This lifetime gap not only affects a woman's pay but her pension and Social Security earnings base.
Years ago, unequal pay was an issue for me. This was in the mid-1970s, and I was working as a reporter for a small weekly paper, making $150 a week. After a couple of years, I became friends with one of the bookkeepers. She whispered to me that all the male reporters were making $25 a week more than the women. Now $25 might seem like nothing today, but in 1976 that was one-sixth of my weekly earnings. I was furious.
At the same time, I was afraid that if I made a fuss about it I would be fired. I also worried that word would get around to other papers that I was a troublemaker who shouldn’t be hired. There weren’t many laws to protect my rights back then. Luckily matters solved themselves. I landed a job at a bigger paper. Before I left, I went to one last editorial board meeting.
At that meeting, I shocked everyone by saying, “Do I need to get a sex change operation in order to get a raise here?” Jaws dropped open. Then I explained that I had learned the women reporters were earning $25 a week less than the men. One elderly retired editor who still came to meetings insisted that men needed more money because they supported families. I pointed out that I was single and paying rent, just the same as the male reporters, who were all single. I added that groceries and utility bills cost the same for me as they did for the guys. After my outburst, they changed the subject. Later I handed in my resignation.
After I left the job, one of the female reporters called to thank me. She told me that a salary guide had been instituted, and that all the women had received raises to make their pay equal to that of the men. My new paper was unionized, so unequal pay stopped being an issue. Over the years I watched as laws were passed to give women more rights in the workplace. There was a time, back in 1970, when I couldn’t get a job as a mail carrier or school bus driver, because I was a woman. Hard to believe, isn’t it?
When I was in high school, I was told that my career options were to be a secretary, a teacher or a nurse, or to stay home and raise kids. None of these appealed to me. I took my inspiration from the Lois Lane character on the old Superman TV series – I wanted to be a reporter. My mother cheered me on. My grandmother was a suffragette working for women’s voting rights in Estonia, and my mother belonged to the National Organization of Women and worked for passage of the Equal Rights Amendment. Now it was my turn to do something, and I decided to have a career that went beyond secretary-nurse-teacher.
In America today, my daughters and other young women can aspire to be many things, although finding a decent-paying job with benefits might not be easy at the moment. They can aspire to be a Supreme Court justice, a member of Congress, a Secretary of State, possibly even president one of these days. So do we now have all our rights, and is women’s work finally done?
I asked my older daughter what women’s issues directly affected her. She said she was disgusted by contemporary media portrayals of women and the lack of decent roles for mature actresses. She works at a school, and feels that girls 5 and younger are becoming prematurely sexualized by the popularity of sleazy looking clothes and toys like Bratz dolls. This, she says, prepares them for a life of never-ending consumption and pursuit of fads and fashion. They develop poor body images and feelings of insecurity about their worth as humans.
Then we began talking about the serious problems that are faced by women around the world.
There are 130 million children worldwide who are not in school. Two out of every three of these are girls. In some places, girls are married very young, sold into slavery, or forced into child labor at ages when our daughters would be in elementary school.
In Afghanistan last November gangs of men, possibly backed by the Taliban, attacked 15 young schoolgirls by spraying their faces with acid and ordered them to stay out of school. Even though they are frightened, many of these girls have returned to school.
The Taliban has destroyed dozens of girls' schools Pakistan, and at one point declared a ban on female education. This past Monday the government announced a settlement, following talks with the Taliban, that girls in Pakistan's Swat Valley will be allowed to attend school if they wear veils.
Yet in the same area of the world, there is some progress. More than half of university students in Iran are now women. In the applied physics department of Azad University, 70% of the graduates are women.
Greg Mortenson, the author of "Three Cups of Tea: One man’s Mission to Promote Peace”, has said: "If you really want to change a culture, to empower women, improve basic hygiene and health care, and fight high rates of infant mortality, the answer is to educate girls."
And let us not forget that violence against women and girls is a problem of pandemic proportions. U.N. secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon said two years ago today, “Violence against women and girls continues unabated in every continent, country and culture. It takes a devastating toll on women’s lives, on their families, and on society as a whole. Most societies prohibit such violence — yet the reality is that too often, it is covered up or tacitly condoned.”
Looking around on the Internet, I see that positive things are happening to create more change for women.
The International Convocation of Unitarian Universalist Women met in Houston last week. It was the first ever gathering of UU women from around the world. They are promoting a Global Literacy Project, to educate ourselves about our UU global village, the challenges women face globally and what UUs are doing about improving women’s lives. “Global literacy” means becoming informed about what it means to be effective global citizens.
Many other organizations, including the UN, are working to increase educational opportunities for women and to stop violence against women.
At the very least, we today need to understand that women are not there completely as far as rights are concerned. We may possess the right to vote and receive equal pay, but without an Equal Rights Amendment in the U.S. Constitution, those rights and others might some day get taken away. And as long as there are little girls somewhere in the world who are not allowed to attend school because of their gender, I am not satisfied. Our women’s work is still not done.
* Closing Words
Remember that our goals of equality of gender, race, and the right to marry are still unmet. There is still work to be done.
Blessed be, amen, shalom.
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