The Constitutional Equality of Women
For young women coming of age today, their equality with men seems assured. As youngsters they’ve played on co-ed sports teams; they’ve often been more successful than boys in school; they’ve pursued careers in previously male-dominated fields like math and science, medicine and law. For them, women have always been able to vote, abortion has always been legal, and women have reached high places in politics. Many probably have mothers (and fathers) who came of age during and after the second wave of feminism, believing they would raise their daughters to believe in their capacity to be equal citizens.
It might surprise some women, then, to learn that women’s equality is not guaranteed, at least not constitutionally.