any property that might be in her name alone. She is not allowed to sell it even if the title was in her name and she has paid for it.

If she marries, she needs her husband's signature as joinder. The law states specifically concerning several statutes like arrest and bail, seduction, criminal law, rape, kindred offenses, libel and slander, that women are not protected under the North Carolina law, and if there are any clarifying points on that you would like to ask me, I would be more than happy to reel them off to you now.

Senator Cook. I may say, earlier in the day when we started this morning, thinking that you were not going to be able to be here, we did put the AFL-CIO statement into the record that they supported this amendment.

Mrs. FORBES. Yes, good. That is good. But like I said, if you wish any clarification on the North Carolina statutes per se.

Senator Cook. No; we have gone over that for quite a few days. I must tell you as a matter of fact we argued between Kentucky law and North Carolina law quite a bit.

Mrs. FORBES. Well, fine. Then, since we do have a plane to make, let me turn the microphone over to Mrs. Elsie Hales.

Senator Cook. We are delighted to have you.

Mrs. HALES. Senator Cook, my name is Elsie Hales, and I am vice president of the Amalgamated Meat Cutters & Butcher Workmen of North America, AFL-CIO, Local 525. I am here to present testimony in favor of the equal rights amendment. I know Senator Ervin wishes to keep State protective labor laws on the books, even if the equal rights amendment is passed. I am here to urge that this committee pass the equal rights amendment without Senator Ervin's substitute wording.

My union is eighth largest in the United States, and our local membership is around 5,000 in North Carolina. I feel I must speak out for the workingwomen of North Carolina, which Senator Ervin seems to have forgotten.

North Carolina is well known as an exploitable labor State. Women make up 43 percent of her work force. In 1969, North Carolina ranked 42 out of 50 States in per capita income and maintained a very low union organization percentile of 7.5 percent. Add to these facts, the restrictive State labor laws as cited previously, and you have a severe discriminatory pattern for keeping workingwomen in our State, not only low paid but "in their place."

I am sure that my testimony will refute some of the previous testimony given by other union leaders who say they represent all the workingwomen of America. Has anyone noticed that the executive council and executive committee of the national AFL-CIO does not have one woman on it?

This past week I, along with other delegates to the North Carolina State AFL-CIO Convention got a women's rights resolution passed and the first item in that resolution called for the passage of the equal rights amendment.

We are tired of being told we cannot take supervisory or management positions even though we are qualified by years and experience to do so. No matter how hard we work we barely break even trying to live a decent life. None of the current legislation, Federal or State,

nor union help has been able to cut down on the severity of discrimination against the skilled female workers of North Carolina. It is particularly more severe for the female agricultural workers in the tobacco and cotton fields.

Nineteen hundred and seventy is the first time women in North Carolina have been able to demand equal pay in their union bargaining proposals. We will not be denied our wage rights, and the laws helping us now do not do so except on a very small basis.

We will no longer be denied our civil rights under the law either. We know the equal rights amendment will give us these civil rights and stop both the Federal and State Governments from exploiting us under the guise of "protective labor legislation."

I personally know a woman who was qualified to fill a position specified as "Third Man" in a company, a position which leads to an assistant manager's job. She was turned down on the sole excuse that she was a woman. This woman could not even afford to continue her legitimate grievance because she feared company reprisals and she simply could not afford any legal expenses.

This, gentlemen, is one of the most important reasons for passing the equal rights amendment intact, without Senator Ervin's damaging clauses. The burden of proof now rests on our shoulders and it belongs on the shoulders of the governments who discriminate against

us.

Let me give you another example, and there are many thousands more of these, of how severe sexual discrimination is in North Carolina.

I know of women on production lines, qualified for supervisory jobs by years and experience who have been turned down simply because they were women. Then the company brought in 2-week trained males, far younger than they, to supervise them.

The feeling of degradation is hard to imagine by you gentlemen, for you have not been subject to this insidious form of discrimination; but we have, and it hurts.

I can vouch for the intense feelings of the women at our recent AFL-CIO State convention, and for those who work in our State that have expressed the same feelings to me, that they feel they cannot complain or risk harassment and firing. They feel they have to take the low wage offered them or be told they will get no job at all.

The women know they have little support from their fellow male coworkers, and yet these women continually prove their job competency year in and year out.

This exploitation has got to stop, gentlemen, and speaking as a union member now, I wish to inform you we are prepared to strike if we are denied our civil rights any longer.

We feel Senator Ervin is not, I repeat, not representing the women of North Carolina with his substitute equal rights amendment. We feel he is trying to keep us back from any job advancement we deserve and want.

We would like to know the answer to one question here today, and that is, just who is Senator Sam Ervin representing?

Thank you for hearing my testimony today. I'll be happy to answer any questions you wish to ask.

Senator Cook. I hope you don't mind if I don't ask any questions? Mrs. HALES. Not at all.

Senator Cook. We would like to wind up today.

I want to say I am delighted to have you here from North Carolina. I am delighted to have the recognition of your own organization in North Carolina purely and simply because unlike my colleague, we do disagree, as you well know, on this. I think we are miles apart.

I think it is nice to know that representation from North Carolina is here; that at least substantiates my position.

Last week, in relation to Kentucky law that was supposed to be so protective, he almost made me feel like I had almost subverted myself to the nonpolitical field of being against motherhood, and it is nice and reassuring to have you here and express the views that you did.

I want to thank both of you. I really didn't mean that to be funny. But it was kind of tough going last week.

Mrs. FORBES. We are all well aware of his filibustering techniques, his techniques of being able to make you feel that if you don't agree with him you are against motherhood, apple pie, the Bible, and things like that.

Senator Cook. Well, he is a remarkable man, I have to say that and I have a great deal of admiration for him.

Mrs. FORBES. We have had admiration for both of our Senators and this is something that affects us directly and this is why we felt we had to come and testify in favor of our rights.

Senator Cook. Well, I am delighted that you put it that way, really and truly, because I must say to you in all fairness as a lawyer, as a former jurist, he honestly believes this and there are many who somehow or other do not believe this. I believe he believes it as a principle of law and that is why I think lawyers disagree quite frequently. I do not take the position that he takes, but I do respect him for the position that he takes, even though I am going to try my darndest to beat him.

Thank you very much.

Our next witness is Mrs. Jean Faust.

It has been a long day. You have been in several chairs and I have been in the same one.

STATEMENT OF JEAN FAUST, ASSISTANT ON WOMEN RIGHTS TO CONGRESSMAN WILLIAM F. RYAN

Mrs. FAUST. My name is Jean Faust and I am Assistant on Women's Rights to Congressman William F. Ryan of New York.

Senator Cook. What part of New York?

Mrs. FAUST. The 20th District, the upper west side of Manhattan. I grew up in the great State of North Carolina but had to leave it because there was no opportunity there for me. When I was growing up in North Carolina I lived on a farm. I worked side by side with men. I never learned in those years that men could do more work than I. I worked from sunup to sunset and often a little bit later during the tobacco season, and no one ever told me because I was a girl I should go home early. In fact, I had to go home and cook dinner while the men were resting.

I also played baseball with boys in grammar school and I played better than every single one of them. There was only one boy who played as well and he and I ran the whole thing.

I have done many types of work in my life. I worked my way through college as a waitress and I have sisters who work. In fact, I have two sisters who support their husbands and families, and those two sisters need the real support that equal protection under the law would provide, rather than the fraudulent support that some of the laws now provide. I believe their husbands are entitled to support and I believe my own husband is entitled to support if that should become

necessary.

The year 1969 will be remembered in history as the year mankind reached the moon, an unprecedented leap in the technological achievements of man.

Unfortunately, the pace of progress in human relations has been much slower. Minority groups, students, and women have been calling for change, but are rapidly losing belief in the ability of the system to accommodate different viewpoints and affect change in keeping with the legitimate demands of the people.

In no other area has change been so slow to come as that of the status of women. No other group has been so loyal to the stability of society, so patient in waiting for change. That loyalty and patience have patience have become severely strained and are likely to explode in the face of reactionary forces which cling to tradition and outmoded custom long after the actual behavior of American women has demonstrated conclusively that these traditions and customs are no longer valid.

The first organized meeting of women to demand equality of rights in the United States was held at Seneca Falls, N.Y., in 1848-122 years ago. It was organized by Lucretia Mott, Elizabeth Cady Stanton and other pioneers in the Women's Movement, both men and women.

But it was not until 72 years later, in 1920, that the principal demand of the movement, the right of women to vote, was won through passage of the Nineteenth Amendment (50 years after the Fifteenth Amendment had given the vote to former slaves-males only).

The country which has the proudest history of protecting human rights also bears the shame of having sustained a system of slavery for many years. It was while fighting for the abolition of this wrong that American women began thinking of their own oppressed status and started a movement to fight for their own rights.

It took 72 years to get the vote for women; then a broader protection-prevention of discrimination under law on the basis of sexwas sought by the introduction of the Equal Rights Amendment by Senator Charles Curtis, of Kansas, in 1923. An identical resolution was introduced in the House of Representatives by Representative Daniel Anthony (nephew of Susan B. Anthony), also of Kansas. Thus began the long struggle of women to determine that: "Equality of rights under the law shall not be denied or abridged on account of sex.' This simple text has inspired in opponents an amazing torrent of fear, suspicion and hostility. They have predicted the most frightful consequences of enacting equality of treatment under the law for the 51 percent of our population which happens to be female.

They declare that the amendment is unnecessary, thus completely disregarding the facts of the history of the movement. In the many cases which women have brought in their struggle for equal treatment, the Supreme Court has never once ruled that the Fifth or Fourteenth Amendments apply to women; in fact, on the contrary, that august body has actually ruled a number of times that these amendments do not apply to women because a woman is not a person in the context of the constitution. These gentlemen knew very well that the men who wrote the constitution deliberately and intentionally excluded women (along with slaves, Indians, criminals, mental defectives, indentured servants and other unrepresented groups). Thus, it is cynical and misleading to the uninformed, for opponents of the Equal Rights Amendment to claim the amendment is not needed.

The civil rights movement has won recognition for the rights of some oppressed groups in the United States; but the rights of women are only now being discussed; discrimination because of sex is only in the process of being defined. The women's movement is still being ridiculed. Newspapers, magazines, and TV programs are rife with cartoons, articles, commentary and comedy skits that deride women in general and the feminist movement in particular. A number of comedians have long made careers based on jokes denigrating women. American novelists have for years made savage attacks on women as mothers. Movies depict women as sex objects, having no more relevance to plot than the furniture.

Opponents of the bill claim that such prejudice cannot be changed by law; yet we have certainly seen that laws, and especially enforcement of civil rights laws, have at least begun to stimulate progress towards racial justice.

Only the politically cynical, who believe that the public is politically naive, would claim that a national law would have no effect on attitudes and customs. Our laws against murder and other crimes have not stopped crime, but they have created a public attitude unfavorable to such behavior. Applying equal protection of the constitution to women would be an undeniable statement of national purpose, would notify the prejudiced and the unaware alike that the United States has gone on record against discrimination because of sex.

One critic recently referred to the Equal Rights amendment as the "so-called equal sexual rights amendment," thereby exhibiting lack of knowledge of the language and purpose of the amendment, which would protect both men and women and would cover rights under the law, not "sexual rights" (whatever they may be).

As a matter of fact, some of the decisions under the Civil Rights Act have already benefitted men-such as the recent decisions of U.S. District Court Judge Wortendyke that Public Service Electric and Gas Co. of Newark, N.J., must stop violating the civil rights of men by paying women who retire early more pension than men who retire at the same age.

Other opponents employ the shameful argument that many of the issues involved are States' rights. But any legislator who attempted to use that argument against civil rights legislation would be booed off the floor. How can serious matters like age of marriage, property rights, jury service, et cetera, be described as matters for State legis