Weather | Sports | Forums | Comics | Classifieds | Calendar | Movies
NORTH REDINGTON BEACH - The drawing on Sandy Oestreich's desk looks a lot like her vision for the Equal Rights Amendment in Florida: a cowgirl, that prototype of feminine fortitude, riding a snail.
The mollusk might shirk along like the slow wheels of government, Oestreich says, but it still gets the cowgirl where she wants to go.
"I wanted her to be flailing the snail," Oestreich says of the illustration her daughter drew for her. "But we decided not to do that part of it."
Women like Oestreich have been trying to get that snail across the finish line for a good 30 years now. Heartbroken in 1982 when they fell three states short of a constitutional amendment to require gender equality, their vigor is emerging again, now that the ERA might have a second chance.
Today many of those bra burners are grandmothers. Oestreich, 69, who lives in North Redington Beach, is leading Florida's fight to persuade the Legislature to ratify the amendment. This weekend the activists will kick off the 2004 lobbying campaign at the Florida Marine Research Institute with an event that is open to the public.
The last time the ERA was making headlines, Oestreich was a working mother who gave what she could to the ERA cause. This time, retired with more time on her hands, she's giving all she has.
"We women have been too noble for too long," Oestreich said. "It's a different climate than it used to be."
That climate is more open-minded about women's roles, but it is making the ERA a tough sell in some circles. Women of Oestreich's generation find it hard to reach younger women, who grew up walking through doors they did not have to kick down.
"The ones that were there 20 years ago, I don't have to explain the ERA to them," said Oestreich, president and founder of the Equal Rights Alliance in Florida. "All I have to tell them is: "It's back, and we only need three states.'
"You can see them go back in memories, and a deep pain crosses their face. You have to let that happen," she continued. "They spent all their money and all their time, and some women just died of exhaustion afterwards. There was a great demoralization of women across the country."
The ERA would add these words to the Constitution: "Equality of rights under the law shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any state on account of sex." Congress approved the wording in 1972. But, to add it to the Constitution, 38 states had to ratify it.
By a 1982 deadline, only 35 states had done so, and the Florida Legislature was not among them.
The catalyst for resurrecting the ERA was a 203-year-old amendment originally proposed by James Madison and ratified in 1992. ERA supporters say that amendment, which deals with congressional pay raises, proves there is no constitutional time limit for ratification.
That would mean the ratifications of the ERA are still valid, something likely be decided in court.
Supporters now are looking for three more states to ratify the ERA, and Oestreich hopes to make Florida one of them. Illinois could ratify in the upcoming legislative session. Optimistic ERA supporters hope Florida is next.
"We're going to do this," Oestreich said. "There's no doubt in my mind, we're going to do this."
But the ERA squeezed out of just one committee last year in the Florida Legislature. Gov. Jeb Bush, in comments that lit a fire beneath Oestreich and many like her, has called the movement "retro" and compared it to other relics from the 1970s, like bell bottoms. One South Florida writer said that given the state's swing toward conservatism, ratification of the ERA has "a snowball's chance in Miami."
Opponents fear the ERA would open the door to gay marriages, unisex bathrooms and a military draft for women. Even some supporters aren't confident it can pass in Florida.
"The difficulty is pushing something that is up against a block wall," said Pat Frank, a Democratic state senator during the 1982 fight for the ERA who is now a Hillsborough County commissioner. "We know that the House is certainly not going to pass it, and how do you turn people around?"
Oestreich, known for her unfailing energy, is convinced the state will ratify - eventually. Her approach to dealing with the current leadership is simple: "We'll outlast them," she says.
She runs the campaign from a home office in North Redington Beach that she shares with her husband of 50 years. The Declaration of Sentiments, prepared by women such as Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Lucretia Mott who attended the Seneca Falls Conference on women's rights in 1848, is posted above her computer.
Oestreich was born into a military family that landed in St. Petersburg in time for her to attend high school at St. Petersburg High. She describes herself as an only child with an acute sense of fairness.
When she saw an African-American friend drinking from a separate water fountain in segregated St. Petersburg, Oestreich thought the friend was getting something special in the water. Her mother explained why the two friends used separate fountains, and Oestreich vowed to do something about it.
Oestreich became a nurse, then a college professor who taught nursing, then a nurse practitioner. She is a former president of the Pinellas chapter of the National Organization for Women. She used to lead a group of volunteers who escorted women past protesters into a clinic that offered women's medical services, including abortions.
Her own mother was "nonassertive," Oestreich says. "That may have had an influence on me," she said. "I thought, "I'll never be like her.' She lived for my father. I loved my father dearly, but I thought he was a grown man. He could get up and get his own coffee."
Her daughter Cheryl Oestreich, 47, said she was in high school before she realized that not all girls were raised the way she was. "I started to look around me and realized not everybody was raised so fair," she said, "and that the world itself wasn't so fair."
This time around, Oestreich is using some of the same approaches the anti-ERA group used to defeat the measure. The first time around, women opposing the ERA would prepare fresh baked goods for legislators to remind them of women's traditional talents.
Oestreich has appropriated that gimmick, signing up volunteers to bake sugar cookies emblazoned with patriotic colors and the letters ERA. She gives the cookies to legislators and other power brokers.
"We want to tell them that we're not all bra burners," Oestreich said. "We're homebodies, too."
If you goThe League of Women Voters and Florida's Equal Rights Alliance will host the 2004 ratification kickoff for the Tampa Bay region from 1:30 to 4 p.m. Sunday. The event, which will feature guest speakers and information about getting involved in the ERA campaign, will take place in the Karen Steidinger Auditorium at the Florida Marine Research Institute, 100 Eighth Ave. SE in St. Petersburg.