Senator ERVIN. And wouldn't it be far more sensible, since they would have to go to Congress in the event the amendment is passed in the State legislatures to obtain such laws, to come to Congress, than go to State legislatures in the first place and ask them to change such laws as they deemed improper?

Mrs. RELICH. This may be one answer.

Senator ERVIN. Yes.

Mrs. RELICH. Another answer may be to join in a group if there are laws which are actually discriminatory and do something about them. This long span of not having done anything and thinking the equal rights amendment is going to cure these ills just automatically, is not the answer. There is a more sane, responsible, sensible answer, and that is to attack the laws which are indeed, discriminatory and indeed have been used against the women.

Senator ERVIN. Now, I have offered an alternative amendment which provides that any law which will still remain in existence, notwithstanding the House-passed amendment, will exempt women from compulsory military service. Can you see where there is any rational basis for being opposed to preserving the right of women to be exempt from compulsory military service?

Mrs. RELICH. You are asking me whether I can see anything wrong with exempting them?

Senator ERVIN. Exempting them from military service

Mrs. RELICH. No.

Senator ERVIN (continuing). As long as they permit them to volunteer as they do now for noncombatant service.

Can you see anything wrong in making it certain that any law which is reasonably designed to promote the safety, privacy, education or economic welfare of women should not be approved? In other words, why should anybody be opposed to making it certain that a law which is reasonably designed to promote the health, the safety, the privacy, the education, or the economic welfare of women, why should anybody oppose that?

Mrs. RELICH. Well, I couldn't understand why anybody would want to oppose it.

Senator ERVIN. I can't, and also preserving laws which are designed, which you and I agree, unlike our good Senator from Kentucky, agree are designed to enable women to perform their duties as homemakers and mothers, why should laws like that be outlawed in a rational society?

Mrs. RELICH. Well, Senator Ervin, I doubt very much that laws in the various domestic relations area are going to be outlawed. I mean I have got to talk on this subject very realistically and very honestly as an attorney.

Senator ERVIN. Yes.

Mrs. RELICH. But I think that the wording of your amendment, I may disagree with here and there a word—

Senator ERVIN. Yes.

Mrs. RELICH (continuing). But I think that, basically, its addition or inclusion to the present equal rights amendment, passed by the House, which I don't think should be passed at all by the Senate, I think that its inclusion may make, let's say, the bread go down a

little easier if that amendment were added and passed by the Senate because it may, then, give that element of security to those existing laws in States which do differentiate between men and women.

I am not prepared, here, to say that laws which differentiate are necessarily discriminatory.

Senator ERVIN. Yes.

Mrs. RELICH. Laws which may be the same, or provide equal treatment to women and men, may discriminate in their application.

Senator ERVIN. I would like to say I share your conviction that the wisest thing to do would be to pass no constitutional amendment dealing with this subject.

Mrs. RELICH. Correct. That is my feeling.

Senator ERVIN. Then we have plenty of authority and the legislative power of Congress and the legislative power of the 50 States to solve all of these problems in a satisfactory manner. And, furthermore, we have, as I construe the equal protection clause of the 14th amendment, a constitutional provision now if properly interpreted, that would nullify every arbitrary and invidious discrimination, not only against women but against any other group of citizens.

Mrs. RELICH. Well, I would like to see the 14th amendment used a little more than it has been used.

Senator ERVIN. Yes.

Mrs. RELICH. In the application or in the invalidation of discriminatory laws. And as pointed out, I am disappointed that it has not been used more frequently.

Senator ERVIN. The Advisory Commission on the Status of Women, I believe it is, filed a brief in which they urged that the 14th amendment is not sufficient, and they cite, to sustain their point, certain cases. One is Minor v. Happersett, a Missouri case, where the Supreme Court held, way back there in 1874, I believe, that the equal protection clause did not outlaw the statute of Missouri denying women the right of suffrage. Don't you believe that that rule has been superseded long ago by the women's rights amendments?

Mr. RELICH. I cvertainly do. I think it has been superseded by the 19th amendment.

Senator ERVIN. Yes. And that no longer affords any basis to support the passage of this House-passed equal rights amendment, does it? Mrs. RELICH. That's right.

Senator ERVIN. Now, another decision they cite is the Brassville case in Illinois, and a case in Virginia-the Brassville case having been handed down about the day of the Slaughterhouse case, which was the first case interpreting the 14th amendment, and the Virginia case having been handed down before an old man like myself was even born-namely, in 1894-and holding that the States could allow women the right to practice law. Do you believe that those two decisions still have any validity anywhere in the United States?

Mrs. RELICH. No; I certainly do not.

Senator ERVIN. And you pointed out that the Goesaert case, in which the Supreme Court had sustained a Michigan statute there some years ago, that the Legislature of Michigan has had sufficient intelligence to repeal the law under which the Goesaert case was decided.

Mrs. RELICH. Twenty-one years ago they did that.

Senator ERVIN. Yes. And so none of those cases, which are the main ones they cite to prove the necessity for the country adopting the House-passed amendment, any longer have any validity whatever. Mrs. RELICH. No. I agree with you on that point.

Senator ERVIN. Yes.

Mrs. RELICH. That there have been changes otherwise in our manner of living and in our social customs and in our mores and in the courts' thinking.

I think that the court has gone through a transitionary period where it has even reversed itself because, obviously, the U.S. Supreme Court does not always hold to starry devices and can reverse itself 2 years later if it wants to.

Senator ERVIN. Yes.

Mrs. RELICH. And that is done, and I don't think that the citing of a pre-1900 decision, or even the citing of a 1908 decision brought by an employer who wanted to avoid a maximum hours law and was fined by his State when the State went in to enforce it, ought to be used by the proponents of the equal rights amendment to say the Supreme Court will not grant us our rights under the 14th amendment. Therefore, we need another amendment.

Senator ERVIN. Isn't our ultimate hope for the future, or doesn't our ultimate hope for the future lie in the fact that, with the widening of the suns, new understanding will grow and we will see more clearly many of the problems and solve them much more clearly than we have in the past?

Mrs. RELICH. I believe so.

Senator ERVIN. I want to commend you on your statement. I think your statement faces reality. It certainly doesn't emulate the examples of an ostrich sticking his head in the sand so it won't see reality. And I think that you have made a most powerful statement pointing out the very unfortunate impact which ratification of the House-passed equal rights amendment would have upon certain laws which protect women and by so doing protect children in the area of domestic relations and also laws which afford protection to women in the field of labor.

I think you have made a very eloquent and very fine statement. Mrs. RELICH. Thank you.

Senator ERVIN. The committee will stand adjourned until 10 o'clock tomorrow morning.

(Whereupon, at 1:55 p.m., the hearing was recessed, to reconvene at 10 a.m. on Friday, September 11, 1970.)

EQUAL RIGHTS

FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 11, 1970

U.S. SENATE,

COMMITTEE ON THE JUDICIARY,

Washington, D.C.

The committee met, pursuant to recess, at 10:10 o'clock a.m., in room 2228, New Senate Office Building, Senator Sam J. Ervin presiding. Present: Senators Ervin and Cook.

Senator ERVIN. The committee will come to order, please.

Let the record show that I am presiding at the request of the chairman, who is unable to be here.

The first witness is Mrs. Leon Keyserling. Mrs. Keyserling, we would be delighted to hear you at this time. I wish to welcome you to the committee and thank you on behalf of the committee for your willingness to come and give us the benefit of your views on this very important question.

STATEMENT OF MRS. MARY DUBLIN KEYSERLING, ECONOMIC CONSULTANT AND FORMER DIRECTOR, WOMEN'S BUREAU, U.S. DEPARTMENT OF LABOR

Mrs. KEYSERLING. Thank you very much.

My name is Mary Dublin Keyserling. I am an economic consultant in private practice and my work is largely concentrated on major problems confronting women and on programs to meet them. I am a member of the District of Columbia Commission on the Status of Women but I wish to stress that I do not speak for that group or any of the many other women's groups with which I am affiliated. I testify today in my individual capacity, although many of the views I will express are widely shared by many of women's and other large organizations.

From 1964 to January 1969, I served as Director of the Women's Bureau of the U.S. Department of Labor and as Executive Vice Chairman of the Interdepartmental Committee on the Status of Women. From 1953 to 1964 I was associate director of the Conference on Economic Progress, a national research organization concerned with the major problems of the American economy. During a part of this period, I served on one of the committees of the President's Commission on the Status of Women. From 1941 to 1953, I held various economic posts in the Federal Government. Prior to this, I was for 3 years executive director of the National Consumers League and for 5 years taught economics at Sarah Lawrence College.

(149)

I deeply appreciate the invitation of the committee to testify today. Throughout my working life, I have sought actively to help assure women greater equality of rights and opportunities. I have sought to publicize the serious inequities which still confront women and to work for their speedy redress. Particularly was this so during the 5 years I headed the women's bureau when I used every means at our command to increase national awareness of the underutilization of women's talents in our economy, our educational institutions and in civil and political life. I used every means to promote solutions.

I stress this to emphasize how deep is my conviction that efforts to assure equality of rights for women are of signal importance in our society today.

The task is a very large one. There are laws on the statute books which have long been outmoded, are inequitable, and should be changed. Women are still faced with serious obstacles in employment; they remain highly concentrated in the lesser paid, lesser skilled jobs. Equal pay for equal work is far from realization. There are many barriers in employment training. The law, medical, and engineering schools, among others, rationalize their quota systems by drawing on myths with respect to women's labor force participation and work performance. So one could go on at long length.

If I believed the equal rights amendment would truly hasten progress for women, which has been all too long delayed, I would support it, even though in some respects it might do certain injury. It would be easier to support it these days than to oppose it as I do in its current form. But, my own knowledge and experience leads me to the conclusion that the House-passed equal rights amendment would achieve very few of the gains its advocates claim for it. Even if ratified, all the major battles for true equality on the job, in education and civil and political life would still have to be fought. It would deprive many women of rights, opportunities and benefits which the amendment would not automatically extend to men. It would create confusion, open up a Pandora's box of litigation, and create problems which would do the majority of women more harm than good.

This view has been widely shared over the years. As you know, the equal rights amendment was first introduced in 1923. But time and time again a very large number of organizations representing many tens of millions of women actively opposed the amendment in the twenties, the thirties, the forties, fifties, and sixties. Their names appear in the record of the Senate and House committee hearings, as does that of the Women's Bureau and the Labor Department, until this administration.

In 1961, President Kennedy appointed a Commission on the Status of Women. Its members included outstanding men and women representative of industry, labor, civic, and political life, and the major national women's organizations. It was chaired by Mrs. Eleanor Roosevelt. The mandate given the Commission was to analyze remaining barriers to the full realization of women's basic rights and to develop recommendations for overcoming remaining discriminations.

Naturally the Commission gave the equal rights amendment close study. In fact, it held two special hearings on this subject and reviewed many documents submitted to it. Especially to advise it in this area, it