Simply put, “[t]he United States has a sex equality problem that disproportionately impacts women of color,” and thus opens the executive summary for Columbia University’s Center for Gender & Sexuality Law’s latest policy paper, “The Sex Equality Gap: How the 20th Century Sex Equality Paradigm Continues to Leave Women of Color Behind.”
The paper examines how although at face value women have made gains in the key areas of food security, education, healthcare, pay equity, and homeownership, “a deeper examination of this data [does] reveal…a harsher truth: white women have been the primary beneficiaries of sex equality laws, leaving women of color significantly behind.”
For instance, the report cites a National Institutes of Health study that found that after the passage of the Affordable Care Act, which was intended to make healthcare more accessible and equitable, there were “’significant improvements in service use and access primarily
among white and Hispanic men and women,’ while Black women fared the worst with
respect to emergency room visits and unmet need compared to other groups.'”
As far as pay equity, “due to overlapping systemic race and sex discrimination,” the report notes, “over a 40-year career, the wage equality pay gap is much greater for Black
and Latinx women than it is for white women.”
Their solution: passing the Equal Rights Amendment, which would add “specific sex equality protections to the U.S. Constitution.”
Alice Paul originally introduced the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA) at the Seneca Falls Women’s Rights Convention in 1923, stating “If we keep on this way they will be celebrating the 150th anniversary of the 1848 Convention without being much further advanced in equal rights than we are…If we had not concentrated on the Federal Amendment we should be working today for suffrage…We shall not be safe until the principle of equal rights is written into the framework of our government.”
It’s 2023 now, and we’re at the 100-year mark of that landmark convention. But the ERA still has not been added to the Constitution.
ESSENCE had a chance to sit down with Candace Bond-Theriault, Esq., one of the paper’s co-authors, to discuss the origins of the paper, its goals, and next steps.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
ESSENCE: What brought about this policy paper?
The need to really talk about the Equal Rights Amendment for our generation and what a 2023 Equal Rights Amendment looks like. It centers people of color, women of color, young people, and LGBTQ people, and one of the main reasons for writing the paper was to show how an Equal Rights Amendment could really benefit women of color.
Historically, there have been a lot of women of color who have advocated for the Equal Rights Amendment including Pauli Murray and Shirley Chisholm, some really amazing powerhouses. Now we have this whole new guard of folks advocating for the Equal Rights Amendment and it’s becoming a rallying cry again.
It’s really important to understand how legally significant the passage of the Equal Rights Amendment could be for gender justice and gender equality in our country. But more work has to be done, more research has to be done, and more data needs to be collected around the ways in which the Equal Rights Amendment can positively benefit women of color.
ESSENCE: What is one key takeaway that you’d like readers to walk away with?
That there is a sexual equality gap in this country, it is divided by race, and the Equal Rights Amendment is a potential vehicle to close that gap. It isn’t the only thing, but it could be a very big vehicle to push towards the closing of that gap. The goal [of the ERA] is to make sure that regardless of what your gender is, you still have the same access to opportunities, whether that be work, food, or housing.
ESSENCE: Women of color are constantly left behind, so what do you think that the ERA could do to reverse that trend?
Everything is always going to be dependent on how the Equal Rights Amendment, and I will say if and when it becomes the 28th Amendment, how it is going to be interpreted and if it is interpreted with Black women and women of color at the center, so that it considers racial justice and racial implications as well as gender. I think it can be a huge game changer legally for women of color in this country.
ESSENCE: In an ideal world, what do you hope to come from this paper?
That’s a great question, and I hope that it continues the conversation that has already been started around women of color and the Equal Rights Amendment, but I hope that this paper continues that conversation by showing really specific examples of where laws have benefited women, but in reality, they’ve really only benefited white women, and making sure that that nuance is understood as the fight continues, hopefully for not another 100 years, but until passage.