hi everyone i'm wendy murphy thanks so much for watching i'm really grateful to the media center here in belmont for sponsoring this important event you don't to be a lawyer although i am to understand how important the st amendment is and how important free speech is especially to me as an activist for women's rights i teach sexual violence law in new england law boston i run the women's and children's advocacy project there and i do impact litigation on behalf of women and children's civil rights and constitutional rights in state and federal courts around the country and the reason i'm here today is in part to talk about how difficult that work is because of the absence of speech in media in particular absence of news coverage the absence of attention frankly the invisibility of many of the rights that i try to advance and force and protect on behalf of women and children every day in my career it is forums like this that i value so much because they do create visibility for issues that aren't otherwise important enough frankly to be covered in mainstream press so what i would like to talk about in terms of is in visibility of women's issues in particular is the equal rights amendment and i'm sure many of you watching are saying to yourselves what is the equal rights amendment and for those  have heard of it before you're saying didn't that already pass studies show that very few people are even aware of the equal rights amendment what it means for the few who do know what it is about they think that it's done and you know we don't need it anymore so let me just give you the basics the equal rights amendment simply put is a proposed amendment to the united states constitution that would give women a quality under the law that's it it's really that simple and it's shocking but true that women currently do not have equality under the constitution we were explicitly denied equality under the th amendment when that amendment was pas the word male was inserted into the constitution and that was subsequently interpreted by the united states supreme court to mean that women were not protected under the th amendment in particular so women remain nd class citizens although it's really hard to know why it matters or to notice that women are not fully equal persons under the law because there isn't much being said about the fact that women are nd class citizens or what it means and as an academic and an activist who deals with violence against women what i'd like to make clear today to all of you is that violence is the most severe expression of women's nd class status no surprise to me maybe it is to you that women are beaten and raped and killed in extremely high numbers in this country the united states of america was recently named one of the top ten most dangerous countries on earth for women and think about that we think we're such a wonderful democracy and that we do such a good job protecting women's rights we do a terrible job protecting women's rights in part by not even teaching children in school or for that matter teaching lost students like me that women are not equal under the constitution it really is a problem of invisibility that i think if we understood more about what inequality means there would be tremendous visibility frankly there would be outrage in the streets as there ought to be so what do i mean by violence against women is the most severe expression of inequality it's really a very simple concept when state and federal governments pass laws that in adequately protect women from violence like rape and domestic abuse  those laws though inadequate are legal so when a woman goes to court after she's been abused or raped and she's seeking protection under the law or seeking equal justice or expecting the police and prosecutors to take effective steps to redress her suffering and she is denied protection or denied equal redress under the law any challenge to that unfair treatment  cannot be mounted it cannot be successfully mounted as a constitutional matter because if you go to court and say hey i'm a woman and i was raped or abused and i went to court and the court did nothing about it and now my views are back out and i at such high risk of being abused again i have to live in a shelter i have to be incarcerated in a domestic violence shelter because i met risk of being killed because i'm female and that's because the legal system inadequately responded when i reported when you complain about it as a woman the courts are allowed to say i'm very sorry but you are not entitled to equal protection of the law and that's why so many women are killed raped and abused in this country they're not intitled to equal protection under the law on par with the protection of rights that we afford every other type of person in this country so how do visualize it and really just kind of keep it in your or in your mind is a very clear concept is to just look at you know look at what equality and inequality is here's equality here's women here's nd class citizenship that space in the middle that's where violence against women happens with impunity under the law meaning there's nothing you can do about it that's the space we need to close so here's where the equal rights amendment comes into play the equal rights amendment would close that gap by mandating that all state and federal government actions lawmaking law enforcement by both prosecutors and judges all branches of government state and federal would be forbidden to discriminate against women it's really that simple right now they're not for been with the equal rights men in place they would be for been and what that means is then when women go to court and say i haven't been adequately protected you're treating me as a nd class citizen as a result i'm at high risk of violence you'd actually be able to win a court case complaining about that nd class treatment and resulting increased risk of harm so where are you where are we with the with the equal rights amendment this is a really interesting question sometimes when i ask people if they understand that there's a lot going on with the e r a today they say earned run average you know they just aren't exactly sure what  means so that's one of the reasons i'm here today is to hope hopefully by this little talk forever stop you from wondering what the equal rights amendment is or where we are with the area in this country so you know the way amen work the way you pass constitutional amendments in this country is provided the explicit way that it's done is provided in what's called article five of the united states constitution which says that congress shall propose amendments which shall become law when ratified by three fourths of the states well we did a very good thing with the equal rights amendment almost a one hundred years ago in one thousand nine hundred and twenty three alice paul right after suffrage alice paul a well known women's rights activist wrote an equal rights two and then gets sent to the states for ratification which means the states now have to vote through their legislatures to figure out for themselves whether they want to support this as an amendment to the united states constitution and pretty quickly thirty five states ratified massachusetts ratified very quickly most of the states in the north ratified very quickly but here's the here was a glitch congress imposed a seven year deadline on ratification for the states meaning that hadn't made it past thirty five states we weren't close to thirty eight and the deadline expired and people women's rights groups in particular just gave up and said we didn't make it there's not enough time you know we don't have enough time we give up and that's how things were for a while after one thousand nine hundred and two until one thousand nine hundred and ninety two when something really interesting happened the madison amendment was ratified by the states and the madison amendment was a different amendment that granted to members of congress a constitutional automatic right to pay raises that amendment which was ratified by the proper number of states by the thirty eight state in  window of ten years seem a little paltry that got women really angry as a result they started rising up again and saying listen if congress for a pay raise amendment which is not nearly as important as basic human equality if they get over two hundred years we certainly have more than ten we should have more than ten and we started going back to those states asking states that hadn't yet ratified to step up to make to make the decision to vote because lots of the states that might have considered ratifying just didn't do anything at all because they thought the clock had run out well after a lot of years of a lot of hard work and no visibility remember that whole theme about invisibility there was absolutely no visibility to this initiative but basic grassroots right grassroots activism and women's rights advocates just took to the to the streets and really just pounded the doors of certain people in certain state legislatures and actually got it done in two states in two thousand and seventeen we finally got to thirty six which was nevada nevada ratified into the i'm sorry in  thousand and seventeen we got to thirty six and then this year in two thousand and eighteen we got to number thirty seven with illinois illinois became the thirty seven states so we are now only one state away from ratifying the equal rights amendment in the united states it's very exciting time again it's not getting a lot of news attention it should but it isn't so here we are one state away what states are likely to to be next virginia looks like a very good possibility we actually have the votes in virginia but some anti ers anti irrate types in one of the committees is refusing has been refusing to let it out we think he's going to let it out this year when they start up again in two thousand and nineteen  carolina it won't be surprising to you i think to hear that most of the un ratified states are in the south there's one i think one state missouri which is above the mason dixon line that still hasn't ratified strangely but this is an awkward kind of north south fight still to this day it's interesting that wasn't the fight with suffrage with suffrage it was a kind of east west fight with the western states quickly supporting suffrage in the eastern states not i know it's weird but here we are twenty thousand one hundred and eighty one state away from ratifying the equal rights amendment and a very exciting time for women in this country i don't think it requires a lot for me to persuade you that women are rising up from the me too movement and so many other really important stories that are just horrific about the status of women and the status of women's lives in this country we've i think we've finally come to a point where we realize without baseline constitutional equality nothing else is possible you cannot have equal pay without equality at the constitutional baseline you cannot have equal access to health care without equality at the constitutional baseline you know put another way dead women don't need contraception we're really talking about one of the most serious issues to ever affect women's lives the fact that one in three women will be sexually assaulted in her lifetime i think the number is probably much higher the fact that  similarly high number of girls and young women are sexually assaulted in school the numbers are really high for women and for women compared to other classes of people no matter  matter what other class of people you compare women to women suffer more violence abuse harassment because they are female and it's largely because the laws in the state and federal governments the laws are disproportionately disrespectful of women's right to equal protection i'll give you one example here in massachusetts that i hope you'll find shocking gender is the only category not currently protected under the massachusetts hate crimes law every other category is protected everyone which means if you're targeted for violence because of who you are in society that's considered a hate crime which doesn't necessarily guarantee that you're going to suffer more punishment or you know go to prison for a longer time but it at least gives it the name it recognizes the value the importance of the fact that a person was chosen to be victimized by violence because of who they are in society every class of person in massachusetts is protected except women transgender was added in two thousand and twelve with a lot of support from mara healey our attorney general who was at the time running the attorney general civil rights division well mara healy does not support adding gender to the state's hate crimes law now i find that odd i find it odd for any politician to say out loud that they think women deserve nd class treatment nd class protection under the state's take crimes law especially considering that women suffer more violence than the other categories more violence because they are female think about that and here's why it matters so much here's why i think it matters so much that we understand and and frame and talk about the fact that women are targeted because they're female here's why it matters we understand intuitively when we talk about and think about civil rights issues and civil rights laws that if a black person is beaten or insulted or hurt because of the color of their skin we all understand intuitively that that's an injury not only to that person to that victim but to all of us to our communities i know how i feel when i hear about racist violence i feel injured and i'm obviously not a black person but i feel injured because i'm a member of the community where that harm happened that's the beauty of civil rights laws they create legal injury in the collective they make all of us feel injured as we should so that we all feel like we have skin in the game we have an interest in prevention we have a feeling of connectedness to that harm and then we play a significant role in making things better in fighting back in standing together with each other across all lines to make sure it doesn't happen again we don't do that for women and we should when a single sexual assault or a single act of abuse happens it is not only an injury to that woman it is an injury to all women as a class and to each one of us as a member of her community that's why the e r a matters it will change how we feel about women suffering it will engage all of us in prevention it will make women's lives safer because they will be equal i hope you care about the array i hope you consider the importance of the e r a when you vote for all your elected officials moving forward and i hope if you ever need help from any whatever issue you regard to violence against women or children you call me because i'll help you thanks for watching