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Health & Fitness

E.R.A. -Time for women to rise up

The ERA Amendment is overdue.

The ERA, Equal Rights Amendment, for women is now long overdue. This is especially true here in Minnesota. In the next election cycle, 2012, constitutional amendments are expected on many issues deemed as being social in context. Many of these will impact women either directly or indirectly.

The 2010 census indicates there are 157.2 million women in the country and 153.2 million men. As such women have the upper hand at the polls. This fact becomes starker when considering women of voting age who in 2008 voted at a rate of 66% whereas men voted at a rate of 62%.

My grandmothers were born into a world where women could not vote. After a long and arduous struggle they won that privilege. Yet today women still earn at a rate of roughly 88% of their male counterparts.

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The Minnesota GOP is quick to suggest that it is necessary to “let the people vote” on the rights of about 200,000 citizens to access the courts and ask for the legal basis of the DOMA (Defense Of Marriage Act) for fear that “activist judges” might come down in favor of civil rights.

This should scare women as a group. Because if that many Minnesotans can be denied one of the three legs of government, i.e. the judiciary, then what is to prevent some future clarion call to remove the rights women have attained so far and still lack in terms of an ERA amendment.

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The root of the term conservative is conserve. One of the things the majority female gender should be concerned with at this point in time is to conserve what rights they have.

The time is right to let the people vote on the ERA and embrace women’s rights. Let's find out who is really on the side of the majority or minority groups in the state of Minnesota.

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