The Woman Who Stopped Equal Rights in America
The History Hour
BBC
4.4 • 912 Ratings
🗓️ 17 June 2017
⏱️ 50 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Phlyllis Schalfly, the woman who defeated a law to guarantee gender equality in the US; plus, the first performance of the Beatles hit "All You Need Is Love", a forgotten WW2 disaster, Berber rights in Algeria, and the volcanic eruption on the island of Montserrat.
PHOTO: American political activist Phyllis Schlafly smiles from behind a pair of podium mounted microphones, 1982. (Photo by Hulton Archive/Getty Images)
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hello and welcome to the History Hour podcast from the BBC World Service with me Max Pearson, |
| 0:04.8 | the past brought to life by those who were there. |
| 0:08.0 | This week the sinking of the Lancastria, a British Second World War troop carrier, which resulted in the single worst loss of life in British maritime history. |
| 0:16.0 | Also the fight for Berber rights in Algeria, a huge volcanic eruption in the Caribbean, |
| 0:22.0 | and the day the Beatles, the Fab 4, played to an |
| 0:25.2 | audience of hundreds of millions 50 years ago. And then the next thing is |
| 0:29.8 | the fabs are on little microphones with their chairs. |
| 0:34.0 | Three, two, what, you're live. |
| 0:37.0 | 700 million people. We'll be reliving that iconic moment later in the podcast. But before all that |
| 0:49.1 | the still heated debate over gender politics in the United States. In June 1982 a 10 year long battle |
| 0:57.0 | between feminists and the pro-family movement in America came to an end when the |
| 1:01.4 | equal rights amendment was defeated. |
| 1:04.0 | The ERA would have changed the US Constitution |
| 1:07.0 | to guarantee explicitly equal rights for men and women. |
| 1:11.0 | The fight against the amendment was led by one woman, the conservative |
| 1:14.1 | Phyllis Schlafly. Claire Bowes has been listening to archive recordings of |
| 1:18.3 | Mrs Schlafly held by the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library. |
| 1:21.9 | What do women want? Equal rights. |
| 1:25.0 | Now! |
| 1:27.0 | One do we want to even want equal rights now! |
| 1:30.0 | During the 1960s and 70s, |
| 1:32.0 | women in America had started to ask fundamental... During the abortion rights. The women's liberation movement reached all kinds of women. It seemed |
... |
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