Woman Between Islam and Western Society
3. Western Woman
~ 120 ~
dignity, she is not about to blow up the whole
works by refusing to do what was contracted
at the onset of her marriage — namely
Women’s Work — which covers everything
from enduring labor pains to counting
laundry ...
The siren song of “women’s liberation” is
complicated and contradictory. Indeed, as soon as
the vote was won, American suffragists split over a
proposed Equal Rights Amendment (ERA) to the
U.S. Constitution. Many women with a background
in the social reform movement believed strongly in
female differences, and feared that the ERA would
preclude legislation protective of women.
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More
than 50 years later, in 1972, the ERA was passed in
the U.S. Congress, but then failed to receive
sufficient backing from state legislatures to be
adopted.
“If the feminist revolution simply wanted to
exchange one ruling class for another, if it aimed at
outright female domination, the goal would be
easier to visualize,” concluded Bonnie Angelo in
her overview of American women’s status in 1972.
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