In 1970, the Mary Tyler Moore show aired and was considered ground-breaking because it was depicted a single women with a career making her own decisions with no boyfriend or fiance by her side. When the Mary Tyler Moore Show ended, "Mary Richards" did not marry the man of her dreams and go off to live happily ever after. Rather she and most of her co-workers had been fired and faced the prospect of finding new jobs.
In 1971, a singer from Australia named Helen Reddy released a song she had co-written entitled "I Am Woman" which would become the anthem of the women's rights movement. In 1972, the Equal Rights Amendment was passed by Congress and sent to the States for ratification. The premise of the Equal Rights Amendment was quite simple: women and men would be treated equally under the law. The United Nations declared 1975 International Women's Year and used Reddy's song as the theme.
One of the many issues women struggled with during the 1970s was equal pay for equal work despite the fact that the Equal Pay Act had been passed by Congress and signed into law in 1963 In 1972, the Mary Tyler Moore Show addressed this issue. “Mary Richards” discovers that she is being paid less money than the man who had previously been in her position at the newsroom. When she asks “Lou Grant” about the disparity in pay, she is told that the reason she is paid less is because the man needed to make more money. She, of course, is dismayed, but cannot really do anything.
Moore's show was not the only show to address the issue of equal pay. In 1977, Alice, the comedy starring Linda Lavin, also addressed the issue when Mel hired a man and paid him more money. The waitresses quit, but came back to work. Mel's solution was not to give the waitresses more money but to give the man less money.
More woman were elected to office on both the State and Federal level making more and more inroads into places that had previously been male only. In my former home State of Massachusetts, in the district next to mine, Sharon M. Pollard defeated the incumbent in the 1976 election to become the first woman to be elected to the State Senate from that district and one of five female Senators when she was sworn in to office.
Interestingly some of the biggest opponents to changes for women were women themselves. In the 1970s, Erma Bombeck, beloved writer whose newspaper columns were posted on many refrigerator doors, spoke out in favor of the Equal Rights Amendment, she defined it in the most simple terms, “one size fits all”. Yet not only were there women who opposed her for her pro ERA stand, there were some who accused her of being part of the problem because of her writing. Mary Tyler Moore, whose show was considered ground-breaking in its depiction of a single woman who was not dependent on a man, was criticized for not being more “militant”.
But those were the 1970s and things surely changed as a result of of the women's movement. Well, in 1995, just twenty-two years ago, the words “Someday a woman will be PRESIDENT” were printed on a t-shirt along with a drawing of Margaret, with a happy expression, from the Dennis the Menace comic strip. Those words were enough to get that shirt removed from Walmart because some shoppers found them offensive. I read about the incident in a magazine. I was stunned to think that in the mid 1990s the idea of a woman being President of the United States offended anyone. I immediately went in search of the shirt which I found at another store. I wore that shirt proudly for awhile then put it away and wore other shirts. Ah, but that was the mid 1990s and things are different now, right?
Hillary Clinton lost the 2016 Presidential election despite winning the popular vote because she did not receive enough votes in the "swing States" to win the Electoral College vote. She was the first woman to be nominated by a major political party as its Presidential candidate. There were women who objected to being told they should vote for her just because she was a woman. I certainly understand their position. I would not vote for a woman just because she was a woman. As Senator John McCain found out when he chose Sarah Palin, women do not vote for a candidate just because she is a women. Ironically though, some women will vote for for a candidate just because he's a man.
But back to Hillary Clinton and women objecting to being asked and/or told they should vote for her because she was a woman. Hillary Clinton was not "just a woman" running for political office. She was the most qualified, most prepared and most ready to lead candidate that this country has seen in our lifetimes. The fact that a candidate so well suited and prepared for office was a woman should have drawn women to support her cause, not rally women against her because they felt they were being asked to vote for her "just because she was a woman".
Oh they will say that there were other reasons they refused to support her. That she was flawed. That she never should have been the candidate in the first place and on and on and on. But regardless of what they say, she was the first woman who had the best chance to shatter that highest glass ceiling. She was far more qualified than her male opponent. While there were many factors which contributed to her loss, the fact that she is a woman placed more obstacles in her way and imposed unbelievably high standards on her which men have never experienced.
On the day after the inauguration of the current President, there was a massive Women's Rights March held throughout the country. One reason for the march was that with the election of the current President and Republicans controlling both the Senate and the House of Representatives, women's rights were on a fast track to be reversed. One of the people who attended the Women's Rights march in Los Angeles was Helen Reddy and yes, she sang "I Am Woman".
Ah yes, "I am woman, hear me roar in numbers too big to ignore", the opening lines of that song. But she did not sing all the verses. One of the lines from the verse she did not sing was:
"But I'm still an embryo with a long, long way to go until I make my brother understand..."
Forty-six years after Helen Reddy's song was released, women are no longer embryos. But we still have "a long, long way to go..."
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