The Orginal Constitution

• The Constitution was ratified in Philadelphia one late spring day in 1787. The document was written, revised, argued upon, voted and ratified by white men. No woman had any official say in the matter, although the document laid out how their "representative" government would work. The Constitution makes no explicit mention of women. Only gender neutral terms like "citizen" and "person," or masculine pronouns, are used. With a literal reading, you might think that the United States was comprised completely of men at the time.
  
  

Invisible Citizens

• Because of the lack of representation in the original text, the Constitution was used to discriminate against women for most of its history. During the 19th century, the majority of women couldn't hold property or vote. Black slaves, both men and women, had even fewer rights -- they were considered their masters' property until the 13th Amendment outlawed slavery in 1865. After decades of dogged work by suffragists, the 19th Amendment finally gave women the right to vote in 1920. However, it wasn't until the 1970s that women could serve on juries nationwide, and many women still face employment discrimination in terms of hiring and pay. The invisibility of the female gender in the Constitution makes equal rights for women an uphill battle.
  
  

Interpretation

• Salvaging American women's rights relies on interpreting the intentionally vague Constitution. With patience and determination, women have cleared a huge path in the past 50 years, and in the 21st century there are congresswomen and female Supreme Court justices. Sex discrimination, however, is not a thing of the past. Women today, like women since the the founding of the nation, are clearly affected by the Constitution and how we interpret and adapt it. The Equal Rights Amendment, first proposed in 1923, has not yet passed, falling short of the needed number of states to ratify it before a deadline. However, the Alice Paul Institute and National Council of Women's Organizations report the amendment's ongoing status on their Equal Rights Amendment website (see Resources).
  
  

Today's Fights

• There are many areas about which people disagree on what the Constitution allows, or what it should be changed to allow or forbid. Women's rights represent a large, constantly-morphing legal arena. The most hotly contested issue is the legalization of abortion, which, according to the Supreme Court, falls under a right to privacy implicit in the Constitution. The Constitution affects every American's life, but women have a very specific relationship with the document.