Not many young Americans today have even heard of the Equal Rights Amendment, and for most of those who lived through the fight for its ratification, it’s vaguely remembered as a feminist effort that died in the 80s.
But the reality of America in 2016 is that our constitution still contains nothing that guarantees equal rights for women and that the fight for the ERA, which would guarantee this, is a flame that still burns today in the hearts of many women’s rights activists. Kamala Lopez’s documentary Equal Means Equal aims turn this flame into a full blown forest fire by educating people across the nation about the unjust conditions of women around the world.
The ERA was first proposed in 1923 and eventually passed both houses of Congress before being submitted to state legislatures, with a ratification deadline set for 1979. However, defining equality for women was a highly controversial issue, one that ultimately led to the amendment’s defeat as it was three states short of being ratified. The premiere of Equal Means Equal could not have come at a more opportune time in light of the recent death of conservative activist Phyllis Schlafly, whose arguments that the ERA would lead to unisex public bathrooms and women being included in the military draft played a key role in this defeat.
At a special screening and panel discussion on the documentary at Village East Cinema, director Kamala Lopez gathered with a group of feminist actors and activists to discuss why it is unacceptable that women and men still do not have equal rights under federal law in the U.S. and what steps we should take to get the ERA ratified and achieve true gender equality. I spoke with Orange Is the New Black actor Alysia Reiner and All In Together co-founder Lauren Leader-Chivée about their views on the women’s rights movement and what they are doing to further it:
Why is it important for you to be here and to support the fight for gender equality?
Reiner: I think too many people have no idea what the ERA is, and until we educate people about it, we can’t change anything in our current state around women’s rights.
Leader-Chivée: It’s incredibly important that more women engage in the political process. I think American women appreciate that we’ve not achieved full equality, but we appreciate less actually what it takes to get there. And that takes political participation, it takes change in our laws as well as our attitudes, and it’s important to have movies like this to raise awareness.
What are you currently doing to further the cause?
Reiner: A lot of it is social media, a lot of it is simply word of mouth, just like with my movie Equity. People talking about it makes a huge difference, if women just say “You need to go see this.”
Leader-Chivée: And I run something called All in Together, which is actually training women to be politically active and teaching them to advocate for issues like the ERA and other passion points that are critically important for us to change the country.
During the discussion panel after the screening, Kamara Lopez, Alysia Reiner, Carol Robles-Roman, Jamia Wilson, Ravi Karkara discussed the status of women’s rights in the U.S. and around the world and ways we can go about improving it. All the panelists acknowledged the absurdity of the socioeconomic and political status of women in America in 2016. Wilson explained that even Saudi Arabia, where she grew up, has better street harassment laws than the United States. She said, “I was thinking a lot throughout the film that the issues I endure as a black women are inextricable from the issues I endure as a woman,” emphasizing that it is crucial to educate people about the intersectionality of the ERA and how every issue is connected to gender. Karkara also touched on the importance of education for building support of the movement, pointing out that if boys are raised in a system that tells them that women don’t hold rights, they will justify their patriarchal behavior and never care about supporting women’s rights.
Reiner echoed this sentiment, sharing her own experiences with being mindful of her unconscious bias when raising her daughter and encouraging others “to raise our next generation with deep connection and love.” She also talked about the significance of investigating how Phyllis Schlafly demolished the ERA since “we cannot fight for something unless we fully understand and have compassion for the person were fighting against.” She doesn’t want to make the same mistake again, especially when presidential candidate Trump is using the same strategy of playing on people’s fears and saying he’s going to take care of them.
Robles-Roman talked about the incredible passion and energy that surfaced when the ERA was first introduced, which died down after the ERA fell just short of the finish line. But, she believes that we are at the start of a new era for the ERA (pun intended) and that we’re “pressing the reset button;” it’s the perfect time to rekindle the passion and energy we’ve seen in the past and to make women’s rights a priority in institutions of power. She noted that Equal Means Equal, with its powerful characters, brings the statistics of the war on women to life and can serve as a great tool to spread awareness and generate anger about the issue.
Lopez said that one of the most beautiful things about her documentary is the way it is able to portray pain, and she hopes that showing the film to communities of women can alleviate their pain by showing them that they are not alone and that people care about them. She explained that so many women watch the documentary and then tell her something they’ve never told anyone else, and she encourages women to watch the film with their friends and to share their pain and experiences with one another. That way, women can overcome their isolation, build community, and sustain important conversations that can help further the movement. Lopez also described the opposition she faced when producing her documentary, even from women in the industry, who rejected the movie on the basis that their networks and studios apparently weren’t “doing any movies about women this year.” She explained that because heads of the media industry claim that the public doesn’t care about women’s issues, it’s up to the audiences prove them wrong.
Orange Is the New Black star Taylor Schilling captures the essence of the evening in her introduction to the screening: “We need to let our representatives in congress know that this is an issue Americans care deeply about and that we want to see them take action on it. This is an issue that transcends party politics. It’s a question of fundamental human rights.”
Photo from https://www.facebook.com/equalmeansequalmovie/
