something I didn't know until I went to law school(!!!!!!!) was that universal daycare was a popular — sometimes mainstream — feminist demand in the 1960s and 1970s. for all we talk about women empowerment, the arc of history, and so on, there was a giant leap back in the culture

economic equality was a pillar of the women's caucus in congress, and the women's caucus was large and influential (you can infer from this that the membership included a great number of men)!

this was a bipartisan alliance of legislators, not even particularly radical in its overall politics! the things they wanted (and got) included.... pension reform so widows of deceased civil servants could receive benefits lol

universal daycare was part of a wide array of proposed economic equity reforms that were supposed to go hand-in-hand with ERA. it belongs to the same cultural milieu as "why do hurricanes only have women's names?" and "eliminating interspousal estate taxes"

much of the politics of the 1970s have been successfully erased and buried. the revisionism worked. it worked on me. until I was a law student editing a law journal article about ERA and EEA, I had no idea that universal daycare had ever been inside the Overton window.

reviving the demand for universal daycare is not big bad scary radical socialism. it's honoring the legacy of our grandmothers.

This is (1) absolutely true, (2) the women's congressional caucus expanded to its biggest size in the 1980s. it is no longer the powerhouse it once was bc of Gingrich. ERA had been dead for a bit at that point — but this is how recent the erasure was! https://twitter.com/mouse_clicker/status/1387811721696489476

One of my favorite* memories of law school is spending a three day weekend sitting in the microfiche room of the library pulling up every iteration of the ERA and the EEA ever introduced because digitization didn't go back as far as I needed it to.

*ha, haha

At one point, Martha Minow walked past, saw me through the glass paned door and did a double take. She walked back, peeked in, and asked me what I was doing, looking completely baffled as to why I would be spending a holiday weekend doing this. (my explanation did not satisfy)

In conclusion, I highly recommend law students join a specialized law journal even if you choose not to write onto your school's law review, the memories are priceless and I'm definitely not staring into the middle distance thinking about microfiches right now