Women State Legislators And The Era: Dimensions Of Support And Opposition

Attitudes of women state legislators toward ERA are explored in terms of social, institutional‐political and cultural correlates. Data base is a mail survey of the 688 women serving in state legislatures in 1977. As a group, women state legislators were heavily in supportof ERA. Opposition to ERA is significantly higher among female legislators with lower education, less legislative seniority, who are Republican, from states with legislative party leadership opposed to ERA, in states which elect relatively large percentages of women legislators, and who are from states with moralistic as opposed to traditionalisme political cultures. Group size, psychological and political security, and personal experience of sex discrimination are suggested as explanations. © 1982 Taylor & Francis Group, LLC