Sex, Gender, and the Politics of ERA

"A fine-grained case study....A brilliant analysis of the rhetoric and political styles of proponents and opponents of ERA....Illuminates the continuing power of politicized cultural identities and the fierceness with which people cling to them."--American Historical Review
"The most comprehensive analysis of the politics of the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA) thus far....Historians of feminism and antifeminism, students of recent American politics and social movements, as well as participants on both sides of the ERA battle throughout the country will find much to admire and to enlighten them in this book."--Journal of American History
"A finely detailed study of the struggle for ratification of the ERA in North Carolina....Mathews and DeHart's thoughtful analysis...sheds new light on the dynamics of the ratification effort....Provides fresh insights into the defeat of the ERA."--Reviews in American History
"Reveals the deeply felt meanings that activated participants on both sides of the battle....A fine contribution to our understanding of the increasingly salient politics of gender in the United States."--Frances Fox Piven, City University of New York
"Much more than a narrative account of the ratification process at the state level....A compelling examination of the relationship between politics and culture in modern American society. The authors are to be commended for their balanced, dispassionate treatment of a topic for which no middle ground exists."--North Carolina Historical Review
"Vital, compelling, and frightening....It really makes credible the issues that were central to the battle--especially as seen from the point of view of the opponents."--William H. Chafe, Duke University
"Astute and fair-minded political history, illuminating the impasse reached over the ERA and offering new insight into the mind-set of the North Carolina women who opposed it."--Nancy F. Cott, Yale University
"This study is interesting because Mathews and De Hart use the failure of the ERA to examine weaknesses in the liberal democratic conception of equality and in the quality of public discourse in a liberal democratic society."--Signs
"There are several other books on the ERA....But few are as elegantly written as this book, and none provides an in-depth case study of the women's movement and its opponents at the state level during this crucial stage of mobilization. This book should be read both by social movement scholars, for its superb documentation of the dynamics of mobilization, and by gender scholars, for its stunning portrayal of the history of feminism."--Contemporary Sociology