US university honour anti-feminist icon Mrs Schalfly

(The Straits Times May 19, 2008)A top US university, Washington University in St Louis, Missouri, honoured 83-year-old Phyllis Schalfly, a mother of six children, who heads one of the most successful anti-feminist organisations in the United States.

She founded it in 1972 as she mobilised thousands of people in a successfuly campaign to defeat the Equal Rights Amendment, which was meant to guarantee equal rights under the law for Americans, regardless of sex.

She argued that it would deny a woman's right to be supported by her husband and "lead to women being drafted by the military and to public unisex bathrooms."

She continues to write columns and deliver lectures on college campuses, setting off controversy with her open call for legal distinctions between the rights of men and women.

Last year, she called for a ban on women holding the positions of firefighter, solider and construction worker and argued that a woman cannot claim to have been raped by her husband.

"By getting married, the woman has consented to sex, and I don't think you can call it rape." She said.

She has described sex education classes as "in home sales parties for abortions."

Among her critics is feminist Gloria Steinem, who has commented on the irony in Mrs Schlafly's championing of the full-time mother and wife while she is herself a lawyers, an editor of a monthly newsletter and a political activist.

The campus honor to her has triggers uproar in the university. Mrs Schlafly brushed off the protests.

She said :"I am just sorry for those who tried to rain on a happy day."

"If they were really for achievement of women, they would be admiring what I've been able to achieve."