Author: Roberta W. Francis

Roberta W. Francis is ERA education consultant for the Alice Paul Institute in Mount Laurel, N.J., and former chair of the ERA Task Force of the National Council of Women’s Organizations. A gender equity consultant and writer, she has worked for 45 years on a broad spectrum of issues for women’s advancement, from education and pay equity to reproductive rights and violence against women.

There Is Power in the Word ‘Patriarchy.’ We Need to Start Using It.

News commentators still overlook the obvious when they speculate about why the majority of white female voters in the last three presidential elections cast their ballots for a dishonest, fraudulent, racist, misogynistic sexual predator or why people who call themselves Christians support someone who embodies in virtually every way the opposite of “what would Jesus do?”

I’m tired of snapping at the talking heads on the TV or computer screen, “Come on, say the P word! It’s the patriarchy, stupid!”

We can trace harmful sex binaries, reproductive control and white Christian nationalism back to the same root system: patriarchy. Naming it is the first step toward dismantling its power. 

What Was Justice Alito Thinking?

When Justice Samuel Alito did the final proofreading of his majority opinion in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, he must have felt a great sense of moral rectitude and satisfaction at the fulfillment of a half-century-long mission.

But he should also have been a bit nervous about the thinness of some of his assertions and the vulnerability of some of his legal analysis. That last reading might have gone something like this.