The Equal Rights Amendment to the US Constitution was on its way to ratification — until Phyllis Schlafly went on the attack.
Schlafly, a two-time loser for a Congressional seat, and staunch conservative, seized an opportunity to raise her political profile by decrying the bill as a threat to the sanctity of American families. In “Mrs. America,” a limited series debuting Wednesday on FX on Hulu (not on the FX cable network), well-known feminists such as “Feminine Mystique” author Betty Friedan (Tracey Ullman), Ms. magazine founder Gloria Steinem (Rose Byrne), New York congresswoman Bella Abzug (Margo Martindale) and others find themselves — to their gobsmacked surprise — having to, first, learn how to pronounce Schlafly’s name last name, and second, fight her off.
“The feminists were trying to to speak to the aspirational nature in women as human beings,” Cate Blanchett, who plays Schlafly, tells The Post. “And I think Phyllis really spoke to the homemakers’ fears. She had a fire in her that made her a long-distance runner.”
In 1972, the ERA had been ratified by 28 of the 38 states needed for passage. Sen. George McGovern was running for president, along with Congresswoman Shirley Chisholm. Steinem was campaigning to get abortion rights on the Democratic platform. Schlafly was gathering strength in the Midwest, where her newsletter, “The Phyllis Schlafly Report,” had about 5,000 subscribers. She cultivated her audience of diffident housewives by spreading fears that women would be drafted.
Of Schlafly, Abzug says in the show, “We don’t need to worry about right-wing nuts on the fringe.”
Friedan says of Schlafly: “She looks like a Barbie doll, but when she opens her mouth she sounds like George Wallace.”
The series also co-stars Uzu Aduba as Chishholm, Elizabeth Banks as Jill Ruckelshaus and Sarah Paulson as a fictional character named Alice, one of Schlafly’s best friends.
Executive producer Dahvi Waller asserts that Schlafly, who died in 2016 at age 92, was too obscure to be taken seriously. “The feminists felt her newsletter or any arguments against the ERA were backed by the insurance industry and business interests, and that she was a puppet for misogynists,” she says. “I think what really surprised the feminists was the force of misogyny among lawmakers — that they were so ready to have a woman to hide behind.”
“The insurance lobbies were pumping a lot of funding into the anti-ERA movement because, until the Affordable Care Act, being a woman could be treated as a pre-existing condition,” says Stacey Sher, an executive producer. “And you were able to discriminate on the basis of sex in paying for your policies. So there was a huge incentive for them not to see it pass.”
Waller based her scripts on books and memoirs written by the various women who appear in “Mrs. America” as well as Carole Felsenthal’s biography of Schlafly, “The Sweetheart of the Silent Majority.” Blanchett read that book as well as many that Schlafly wrote herself. “The Phyllis Schlafly archive is enormous and I almost sank under the weight of it,” says the Australian actress, 50. “I had to say at a certain point to myself that I’ve absorbed enough and now I have to attend myself to the story we’re telling.”
The story they’re telling has twists and turns like any other narrative, charting Steinem’s rising star, Friedan’s fading star and the ERA’s changing fortunes. The one constant was Schlafly’s astute ability to assess the game. “She knew the patriarchy was a much stronger structure than the feminists perceived it was. And she knew which side she was going to stand on,” Blanchett says. “The feminists, by being intersectional, meant that there was always going to be room for discord and doubt. In Phyllis’ camp, it was a hierarchical structure where there were many voices, but they were all channeled through her.”
“And she was very happy to be the only woman in the room.”