Even with her flaws, the “first lady of the conservative movement” understood a fundamental human desire.
Phyllis Schlafly, who labeled herself a housewife, called 1964 one of the most productive years of her life: “I was running the Illinois Federation of Republican Women; I wrote A Choice, Not an Echo; I self-published it; I went to the Republican convention; wrote a second book, The Gravediggers—now we’re in September—I was giving speeches for Barry Goldwater, and in November I had a baby.”
When Steve Inskeep, host of NPR’s Morning Edition, announced the news of Schlafly’s death, I assumed he would interview an academic happy to expose (with feminist animus) the hypocrisy of a woman who benefited from women’s rights and also opposed the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA). Instead, Inskeep talked with Penny Young Nance, CEO and president of Concerned Women for America. Nance described the legacy Schlafly has left for conservative women and, in her closing elegiac remarks, called Schlafly “kind and strong.”
Somewhat ruefully, I admire the woman who championed the role of homemakers. In the current culture, however, it’s a lot easier to be embarrassed by her. Her grassroots activism prevented adoption of the ERA, which passed both houses of Congress and was approved by 35 states—just three short of the 38 needed for ratification. In a 1975 debate at Indiana University, Betty Friedan, author of The Feminist Mystique, declared that Schlafly deserved to burn at the stake for her opposition to ERA. In her 1987 book, Just a Housewife, feminist scholar Glenna Matthews practically dedicated her work to opposing Schlafly. (“Feminists need to take a serious, sustained, and sympathetic interest in the home,” Matthews writes, “because it is too valuable an …
