Gloria Steinem’s criticisms of the hit show about the 1970s US women’s liberation movement miss the prescience the series shows about how a path to the White House was paved for Donald Trump, writes Ellin Stein
Viewers tuning in to BBC 2’s Mrs America may have thought they were getting a fact-based drama about the rise of second-wave feminism in the 1970s and the women who fought either for or against it.
The series is actually about the arcane process of making a change to the US’s sacred founding document, the Constitution – at least that’s what a title card at the start of the show tells us, asserting that “this programme is based on actual events that occurred during the political struggle and debate over the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA)”, which would have enshrined gender equality in the Constitution.
But what Mrs America really does is reveal how the struggle to block the ERA’s passage helped push the Republican Party out of the mainstream and pointed its most extreme free market fringe toward its most audacious power grab yet.
While the decade-long campaign to get the ERA passed provides an ostensible structure, the show is really built around personalities, with several of the leading lights of second-wave feminism each the subject of an episode’s central storyline.
This provides a useful way of introducing a new generation to such movement foremothers as Betty Friedan, the cranky, doughty author of the book that kick-started the movement, The Feminine Mystique, who feels she is being marginalised by the new leaders; Shirley Chisholm, the first black woman to run for President who finds her sisters won’t support her for the nomination after George McGovern, the eventual Democratic nominee, promises to support the ERA; Jill Ruckelshaus, the moderate Republican (not then an extinct species) who had Gerald Ford’s ear; Bella Abzug, the forceful Congresswoman from New York whose priority is to guide the bill through the corridors of power; and Gloria Steinem, the journalist-cum-activist whose media-friendly glamourous exterior disguises a keen strategic mind.
Showrunner Dahvi Waller’s boldest move is to make her main character Phyllis Schlafly – played by Cate Blanchett – the titular Mrs America; a glacial blonde with a will to power in the Mrs Thatcher mode.
Although ostensibly entirely devoted to her successful lawyer husband and six children, when Schlafly becomes aware of the ERA she mobilises a cadre of conservative women into a campaign to stop the amendment from gaining ratification on the grounds that women in a traditional homemaking role would lose longstanding protections. Before long, she is leading demonstrations, lobbying legislators, forging coalitions and compiling a powerful mailing list (or ‘database’ in 21st Century speak) that gives her real political clout.
Phyllis Schlafly, Political Housewife
In a recent Los Angeles Times article, Steinem protested that the show came off as “a catfight”. But, considering her media savviness, she is surely being somewhat disingenuous here.
It is perfectly legitimate in drama to depict the spectrum of ideas that forge a political movement as conflicts between individuals. As for Steinem’s wondering “would a nationwide legislative failure of the Civil Rights Movement be attributed to a rivalry between followers of Martin Luther King Jr and followers of Malcolm X?”, Spike Lee’s Malcolm X explored fissures not only between the radical Malcom and King but within the Nation of Islam. Similarly, Ava Du Vernay’s King biopic Selma depicted members of his inner circle constantly arguing over tactics, with some wanting to be more conciliatory and others more confrontational.
Mrs America would be far less complex and interesting without its inclusion of tensions between the liberal white feminists and their black sisters, not to mention the disputes over how visible lesbians in the movement should be.
Steinem also feels that the show over-estimates the effectiveness of Schlafly and her ‘STOP ERA’ organisation – because the real obstacles to ratification were not the opposing activists but the health insurance industry (which stood to lose billions if the ERA prevented it from charging women extra for less protection) and similar big corporate interests. But how many viewers would stick with a drama dominated by scenes of insurance company lobbyists courting state legislators?
The series never suggests that Schlafly’s group enjoyed the same level of popular support or visibility as the pro-ERA forces and makes it clear that her movement provided cover for vested interests while its leader opportunistically used it as a vehicle for her own political ambitions.
It is this tension between Schlafly’s official championing of women happy to be defined as wives and mothers a