Phyllis Schlafly Quotes
I simply didn't believe we needed a constitutional amendment to protect women's rights. I knew of only one law that was discriminatory toward women, a law in North Dakota stipulating that a wife had to have her husband's permission to make wine.
Critchlow, Donald T. Phyllis Schlafly and Grassroots Conservatism: A Woman's Crusade. Princeton University Press, 2005, p. 214.
This quotation illustrates the statement of a reform principle to appease international interests in basic human rights. This type of statement provides the “fig leaf” for the UN and other organizations to pretend that international standards of human rights are being maintained. Nasser did not implement this principle. By the beginning of the 21st century, Egypt was finally making some progress on women’s equality issues. The prohibition on female members of Parliament—{586723}—had been reversed but women were still not allowed to be judges in a criminal trial, laws against infant female circumcision, and other elements of female equality were still not in existence.
She was overly optimistic. She would be dead for 30 years before women got the vote and some would argue that full equality has not been reached yet.
See Belva Lockwood {609865} for the view of the woman who lobbied heavily for the law and became the first woman to practice before the Supreme Court.
Phyllis Stewart Schlafly was an American attorney, conservative activist and author. She held traditional conservative social and political views, opposed feminism, gay rights and abortion, and successfully campaigned against ratification of the Equal Rights Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. She was opposed in turn by moderates and liberals for her attitudes on sex, gender roles, homosexuality and a number of other issues. More than three million copies of her self-published book, A Choice Not an Echo (1964), a polemic against Republican leader Nelson Rockefeller, were sold or distributed for free. Schlafly co-authored books on national defense and was critical of arms control agreements with the Soviet Union. In 1972, Schlafly founded the Eagle Forum, a conservative political interest group, and remained its chairwoman and CEO until her death in 2016 while staying active in traditional conservative causes.
