Cleta Mitchell in NYT: No Room for Dissent in Women’s Movement Today
No Room for Dissent in Women’s Movement Today
By CLETA MITCHELL
Is there a “women’s movement” in 2017? What is it? Who is it?
I became involved with the women’s movement in the early 1970s, when, as a junior at the University of Oklahoma, I was one of five founders of the Oklahoma Women’s Political Caucus. For over a decade, I traveled the state working for ratification of the Equal Rights Amendment. Later, as an Oklahoma state legislator, I was a champion of women’s rights, including supporting abortion rights within the Roe v. Wade framework.
In the 1970s, we fought for legal equality and eradication of the laws, based on English common law, that put women in the same legal category as children and insane persons. We wanted access to the Ivy League schools, the professions, the clubs — everything. Wherever men could go and become successful, we wanted to be there, too.
And we got it all. Big time. The antiquated statutes were repealed. Women got into the professions and the C-suites and the schools and the TV news anchor desks. We got there. We ARE there.
So why, pray tell, were those women and girls wearing those ridiculous hats at the purposeless “women’s marches” in January? Why do they perpetuate the Freudian question, “What do women want?”