Apr 21, 2014 4 min read

“The best way to improve economic prospects for women is to improve job prospects for the men in their lives, even if that means increasing the so-called pay gap.”

— Conservative activist and anti-feminist, Phyllis Schlafly

‘Phyllis Schlafly Speaks – Again!’

You simply cannot make this stuff up. The ultra-conservative who led the attack against the long-defunct Equal Rights Amendment, Phyllis Schlafly, has injected her 19th-century rhetoric into a 21st-century debate.

The gender pay gap is now front and center in today’s politics. While there’s some controversy about the extent to which the gender pay gap exists, there is no doubt that America’s women get paid less than their male counterparts.

Sure, there is a 2012 report from the U.S. Census Bureau that indicates that men who work full time, have median incomes of $49,398, while full-time working women have median incomes of $37,791. That’s why there are all of those claims that women earn only 77 percent  of what men make.

But those numbers don’t take into full account any of the key factors that could lower that wage disparity. They don’t, however, lower them to the point that erases that disparity. Men still make more than women no matter who does the calculating.

Schlafly, somehow thinks that’s OK. “The pay gap between men and women is not all bad, because it helps to promote and sustain marriage,” she claimed in an op-ed she recently wrote for The Christian Post.

I’m not one to cast aspersions at marriage. I, too, have engaged in that particular endeavor — twice. To claim that sustainable marriages, or the prospects of them, are simply the results of women who go bargain-hunting for filthy-rich husbands, I believe, is an insult to many women.

“Suppose the pay gap between men and women were magically eliminated. If that happened, simple arithmetic suggests that half of women would be unable to find what they regard as a suitable mate,” she wrote. Schlafly has a long history of claiming to defend women, while belittling them.

“Equality of rights under the law shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of sex.” Those 24 words sent Schlafly into a frenzy and helped her land on the public policy stage after they were proposed as the Equal Rights Amendment back in the early 1970s.

She’s the founder of the Eagle Forum, which set out to keep the world safe for democracy and free of feminism.

She spread her hostility toward the feminist movement across the television universe, back then — hoping to convince Americans that the ERA would lead armies of women being drafted and sent off to the front lines. She won that battle. The ERA died a slow death.

Since then, she’s frequently adopted the “Keep them barefoot and pregnant” approach to women’s rights.

Back in 2006, she gave an interview in which she hailed the progress made by women during the 20th century. That sounds good, until you consider that “progress” was a result of those two labor-saving devices — the indoor clothes-dryer and paper diapers.

At 89, Schlafly still commands lots of attention. And lots of it is negative. Her latest assault on the word “equal” (Equal Rights, equal pay), seems to have been fashioned out of some seething disdain for anonymity.

Who wouldn’t raise their eyebrows when she claims that women don’t really need to earn what men earn, because women “place a much higher value on pleasant working conditions: a clean, comfortable, air-conditioned office with congenial workers.”

After all, according to Schlafly, “Women typically choose a mate (husband or boyfriend) who earns more than she does. Men don’t have the same preference for a higher-earning mate.”

This kind of talk is a continuing problem for Republicans. These are the same old unforced errors Republicans commit when they try to tell women, minorities, gays, the unemployed and Latinos what’s best for them.

You have to wonder, who are these people who keep saying these kinds of things? More importantly, why do they keep saying these things in public?

Edward A. Owens is a three-time Emmy Award winner and 20-year veteran of television news. Email him at freedoms@bellatlantic.net