No Country for Women

Abortion is one of the deciding factors in US elections. It is time to reflect on our own practices and prejudices

- Urvashi Butalia

In Mrs. America, a mini-series documentary from 2020, a group of actors come together to recreate the debates and discussions around the ratification of the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA) in the US. As the deadline looms for its ratification, the debate is hotting up, with women from across the country pushing for the required number of states—38, a two-third majority, the figure needed for the ERA to be written into the Constitution—as well as the Opposition, often made up of conservative women.

In the end, feminists do not win the battle, and the deadline expires (subsequently, in real life, the battle did get ‘won’ later and 38 states signed, making the era part of the American constitution, but the documentary ends before that time), and there is despair and defeat among the feminists.

This happens in the early 1970s, and the extended deadline for the ratification takes us to the early 1980s. This is a time when women’s issues are predominant on the international horizon—countries are preparing shadow reports to be presented to the United Nations, International Year of Women is being planned, major conferences are in the offing and feminist movements across the world are coming into their own.

But in the US, the country that is seen, and indeed that sees itself, as the epitome of ‘development’ and freedom, many states are still not willing to sign a simple statement that speaks of women’s equality.

In India, these were the years of the Emergency, a time when the women’s movement began to come into its own, and India produced what is now seen as a landmark document that acts as one of the catalysts for the women’s movement, Towards Equality: The Report of the Committee on the Status of Women (1974-75). There were signs that change was on its way and that the gains women were making internationally and in their own contexts would not be reversed.