Years before the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA) to the U.S. Constitution flared and then fizzled, Americans wrote an ERA (actually an article) into Japanâ??s post-war constitution. To be more accurate, a young woman, Beate Sirota Gordon, wrote the language of Article 24 that guarantees equal rights for women.
Gordon passed away over New Yearâ??s at age 89, the last surviving member of that small cadre of American occupation officers and civilians who drafted Japanâ??s post-war charter that is still in force and has never been amended. Her memory lives on with Japanâ??s feminists, who often refer to her handiwork as â??Beateâ??s Gift.â?
The document is best known for its famous war-renouncing Article 9, but even more far reaching in consequence and impact on daily lives of millions of Japanese women is Article 24, which reads:
â??Marriage shall be based only on the mutual consent of both sexes, and it shall be maintained through mutual cooperation with equal rights of the husband and wife as a basis. With regard to the choice of spouse, property rights, inheritance, choice of domicile and other matters pertaining to marriage and the family, laws shall be enacted from the standpoint of the individual dignity and essential equality of the sexes.â?
Read Full Article »