A Radical Demand Effect: Early US Feminists and the Married Women's Property Acts

2014 ◽  
Vol 38 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 221-250 ◽  
Author(s):  
Holly J. McCammon ◽  
Sandra C. Arch ◽  
Erin M. Bergner
Keyword(s):  
Property Rights ◽  
Voting Rights ◽  
Equal Rights Amendment ◽  
Equal Rights ◽  
Married Women's Property Acts ◽  
Economic Downturns ◽  
Property Changes ◽  
The Right ◽  
Demand Effect ◽  
Collective Activism

Numerous scholars consider the economic origins of the late-nineteenth- and early-twentieth-century US married women's property acts. Researchers investigate how economic downturns and women's inroads into business spurred lawmakers to reform property laws to give married women the right to own separate property. Such economic explanations, however, are only a partial story. Our investigation reveals the important role of women's collective activism in winning these legal changes. Women mobilized for property rights often as they pressed for voting rights and, in one case, as they campaigned for an equal rights amendment. We examine circumstances leading to passage of married women's property acts in seven states to show that as women mobilized for property rights alongside voting rights or a broader equal rights law, a radical demand effect unfolded. Lawmakers often considered demands for woman suffrage or an equal rights amendment as more far-reaching and thus more radical and threatening. Such feminist demands, then, provided a foil for property-rights activism, and the contrast led lawmakers to view property demands as more moderate. In addition, as they pressed for these combined reforms, women often engaged in hybrid framing that allowed them to moderate their demand for property reforms by linking their property goals to beliefs already widely accepted. The confluence of these circumstances led political leaders to deem property changes as more moderate and acceptable in an effort to steer feminists away from their radical goals. In the end, the radical demand effect created a political opportunity for passage of the married women's property acts.

scholarly journals The Equal Rights Amendment in the Twenty-First Century: Ratification Issues and Intersectional Effects

2019 ◽  
Vol 47 (4) ◽  
pp. 34
Author(s):  
Hanna H. White
Keyword(s):  
First Century ◽  
Equal Rights Amendment ◽  
Equal Rights ◽  
Right To Vote ◽  
Twenty First Century ◽  
Abortion Access ◽  
The Right

The Equal Rights Amendment (ERA), originally introduced only three years after women gained the right to vote, has seen a resurgence in interest in the twenty-first century with recent ratifications in Nevada and Illinois. This is in spite of the fact that the version of the ERA these ratifications pertain to, which passed in Congress in 1972, appeared to expire in 1982. This paper seeks to summarize the history and present of the ERA, with particular attention paid to how ratification might affect current hot-button issues such as restrictions on abortion access and transgender rights.

The Nineteenth Amendment Today

2020 ◽  
pp. 145-154
Author(s):  
Paula A. Monopoli
Keyword(s):  
Gender Inequality ◽  
Women's Rights ◽  
Voting Rights ◽  
Fourteenth Amendment ◽  
Women’S Rights ◽  
Equal Rights Amendment ◽  
Equal Rights ◽  
Legal Scholarship ◽  
Nineteenth Amendment ◽  
Women's Equality

Chapter 8 concludes that the Nineteenth Amendment can be revitalized today, to more fully ensure women’s equality. It reviews new legal scholarship that suggests direct applications of the Nineteenth Amendment to today’s voting rights challenges. And it describes how some scholars suggest that the Nineteenth should be read together with the Fourteenth Amendment, as a normative matter, to provide a more capacious understanding of the Fourteenth, as applied to women’s rights, beyond voting. Given persistent gender inequality, and the uncertain status of the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA), the chapter concludes that it is worth revisiting the jurisprudential potential of the Nineteenth Amendment, at its centennial.

scholarly journals “Champion Man-Hater of All Time”: Feminism, Insanity, and Property Rights in 1940s America

2021 ◽  
pp. 75
Author(s):  
Magdalene Zier
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
Property Rights ◽  
Law School ◽  
Law Students ◽  
Historical Background ◽  
Equal Rights Amendment ◽  
Equal Rights ◽  
Credible Threat ◽  
The Will ◽  
Social Views

Legions of law students in property or trusts and estates courses have studied the will dispute, In re Strittmater’s Estate. The cases, casebooks, and treatises that cite Strittmater present the 1947 decision from New Jersey’s highest court as a model of the “insane delusion” doctrine. Readers learn that snubbed relatives successfully invalidated Louisa Strittmater’s will, which left her estate to the Equal Rights Amendment campaign, by convincing the court that her radical views on gender equality amounted to insanity and, thus, testamentary incapacity. By failing to provide any commentary or context on this overt sexism, these sources affirm the court’s portrait of Louisa Strittmater as an eccentric landlady and fanatical feminist. This is troubling. Strittmater should be a well-known case, but not for the proposition that feminism is an insane delusion. Despite the decision’s popularity on law school syllabi, no scholar has interrogated the case’s broader historical background. Through original archival research, this Article centers Strittmater as a case study in how social views on gender, psychology, and the law shaped one another in the immediate aftermath of World War II, hampering women’s property rights and efforts to achieve constitutional equality. More than just a problematic precedent, the case exposes a world in which the “Champion Man-Hater of All Time”—newspapers’ epithet for Strittmater—was not only a humorous headline but also a credible threat to the postwar order that courts were helping to erect. The Article thus challenges the textbook understanding of “insane delusion” and shows that postwar culture was conducive to a strengthening of the longstanding suspicion that feminist critiques of gender inequality were, simply put, crazy.

Learning from Failures Present and Past

1982 ◽  
Vol 15 (04) ◽  
pp. 585-587
Author(s):  
Margery L. Elfin
Keyword(s):  
Political Culture ◽  
Constitutional Amendment ◽  
The Political ◽  
Equal Rights Amendment ◽  
Equal Rights ◽  
Speaking Out ◽  
Previous Condition ◽  
Small Band ◽  
The Right ◽  
Fifteenth Amendment

The Equal Rights Amendment (ERA) is not the first failed attempt to amend the U.S. Constitution to make the political power of women more equal to that of men. Nor was the first failure connected with the so-called Women's Suffrage Amendment which was ratified in 1920. Rather, it occurred 50 years and four successful amendments earlier. Despite the determined efforts of a small group of women, the Fifteenth Amendment guaranteed the right of all male citizens to vote regardless of “race, color, or previous condition of servitude” but left out women altogether.It would be foolhardy to draw neat parallels between the experiences of activist women at two times as different as 1870 and the present. Nonetheless, it can be an instructive exercise.Americans have always been suspicious of elites, and criticism leveled at the leadership of the ERA reflects that attitude. It would be unlikely, however, for amassmovement to be the propelling force behind a constitutional amendment. Looking back at the struggle over the Fifteenth Amendment, we see that a small band of educated, upper-middle-class women fought for the inclusion of women. That those women were perceived as an elite does seem to have hurt their cause. Similarly, the ERA's chances may have been damaged by a perception that its chief proponents were not typical American women.Yet, the political culture of the time is clearly of greatest importance in determining an amendment's passage. In 1870 the barriers to acceptance of women as leaders were so great that even communicating their views was no easy task for the early suffragettes. The culture was resistant to women “speaking out.”

scholarly journals UPAYA HUKUM KREDITOR SEBAGAI PENANGKAL RISIKO HAPUSNYA HAK ATAS TANAH YANG DIAGUNKAN

2020 ◽  
Vol 2 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Ghansam Anand
Keyword(s):  
Property Rights ◽  
State Power ◽  
Land Rights ◽  
The State ◽  
Equal Rights ◽  
The Right ◽  
Over Time

ABSTRACT             The creditor certainly wants a position that is not the same as other creditors, because the same position with other creditors means getting equal rights with other creditors of the proceeds from the sale of the debtor's property, if the debtor is liable to the promise. The balanced position does not provide certainty of guaranteed return of receivables. The more creditors of the debtor are concerned, the less likely it is to guarantee the return of the receivable if for some reason the debtor becomes insolvent (unable to pay its debts). The procurement of legally guaranteed copyrights is to provide a position for a particular creditor to take precedence over other creditors. It is also the objective of the existence of Mortgage Rights as regulated by Law Number 4 Year 1996 concerning the Right of Million of Land and Land Related. One of the events that eliminated the Mortgage right is mentioned in Article 18 paragraph (1d) UUHT, that as the last mentioned basis for the abolition of Mortgage right is the abolition of land rights. The abolition of land rights takes place over time, for which the right is granted. Rights that are lower in rank than property rights such as the right to use, the right to use and the right to use are limited in time, even if physically still exist. With the termination of the rights to the land concerned, the rights to the land concerned shall return to the concerned owner or owner and if such right is granted by the state, then the land is returned to the state power. Thus, the creditor of the dependent will lose his position as the preferred creditor. Keywords: Creditors, Debtors, Deposit Rights

The Battle over the ERA

Big Sister ◽  
2018 ◽  
pp. 64-89
Author(s):  
Erin M. Kempker
Keyword(s):  
General Public ◽  
The State ◽  
Equal Rights Amendment ◽  
Equal Rights ◽  
The Right ◽  
Conservative Women ◽  
International Women's Year

Chapter 3 zeros in on Indiana to investigate how conservativism infused with one-world conspiracism developed there and affected feminist goals like the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA). Feminism was alive and well in the state and existing liberal groups formed a coalition that called itself the ERA Coordinating Committee (later renamed Hoosiers for the Equal Rights Amendment) in the early seventies in order to achieve state ratification of the ERA. Feminists adopted a “low key” approach--a strategy to make feminism palatable to the general public in the state. On the right, conservative women effectively transitioned old anticommunist fears to a new target and in editorials described the ERA as communist directed. State ERA ratification riled and rallied the rightwing and made conservatives all the more determined to stop “the planners” in their next showdown, International Women’s Year.

Different versus Equal: The 1920s

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nancy Woloch
Keyword(s):  
Women Workers ◽  
Minimum Wage ◽  
Women's Movement ◽  
Equal Rights Amendment ◽  
Equal Rights ◽  
State Laws ◽  
Single Sex ◽  
The Social ◽  
National Woman's Party ◽  
Women's Politics

This chapter revisits Adkins and considers the feud over protective laws that arose in the women's movement in the 1920s. The clash between friends and foes of the Equal Rights Amendment—and over the protective laws for women workers that it would surely invalidate—fueled women's politics in the 1920s. Both sides claimed precedent-setting accomplishments. In 1923, the National Woman's Party proposed the historic ERA, which incurred conflict that lasted for decades. The social feminist contingent—larger and more powerful—gained favor briefly among congressional lawmakers, expanded the number and strength of state laws, saw the minimum wage gain a foothold, and promoted protection through the federal Women's Bureau. Neither faction, however, achieved the advances it sought. Instead, a fight between factions underscored competing contentions about single-sex protective laws and their effect on women workers.

CONSTITUTIONAL AND TRANSLATIVE ACQUISITION OF RIGHTS IN THE CONTEXT OF THE DOCTRINE OF OWNERSHIP TRANSFER

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Myroslava Hudyma ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Property Rights ◽  
Property Right ◽  
Legal Capacity ◽  
Close Attention ◽  
Ownership Transfer ◽  
The Right ◽  
Qualitative Characteristics

Within the framework of the general doctrine of constitutive and translational acquisition of rights, the publication made an attempt to identify their suitability for describing the phenomenon of ownership transfer. The general characteristics of translational and constitutive acquisition of rights are analyzed, their differences are highlighted, and it is emphasized that the specified types can cover such legal situations as full transfer of the right (the right as a whole), and transfer of a part of powers (as components of the certain right). The paper underlines that the differences between the types of acquisition of rights are not so much quantitative (one jurisdiction or their complex is transferred), as qualitative characteristics and such issues are especially relevant in the spectrum of research on the transfer of ownership as a right that includes a triad of powers. Close attention is paid to the construction of constitutive acquisition of right, the possibility of use of which is extremely controversial, due to the overwhelming denial of the correctness of separation and alienation of a separate authority from ownership right, because the approval of the latter will lead to theoretical dissonance on the existence of incomplete (split ownership). It is emphasized that the application of the construction of the transfer of authority can take place in different shades of meaning and be combined with the right alienation, and without it. Therefore, the construction of right granting without alienation of the right is quite viable. Moreover, the transfer of one or even several powers of the owner is not only practically possible, but also necessary to establish limited property rights on the basis of full property right (ownership right). However, it is noted that in these cases, the acquirer will not receive the right of the alienator as a whole, but only certain legal possibilities of behavior in relation to a particular good. The legal capacity of the acquirer will not coincide with the legal capabilities of the alienator in content and scope, and therefore to talk about the transfer of ownership is incorrect, only a certain authority (powers) of the owner will be transferred, provided its (their) separation admissibility. The paper concludes that the specifics of property rights, which forms a triad of indivisible powers, determines the possibility of applying the construction «transfer of ownership» only to cases of translational acquisition of right, in which the acquirer receives a right identical to the right of the grantor both in content and volume.

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