Nora Stanton Barney to Eleanor Roosevelt
Nora Stanton Barney to Eleanor Roosevelt
11 November 1946 [Greenwich, CT]
My dear Mrs. Roosevelt:
I was one of those who wrote to congratulate you at the time of your appointment as one of our delegates to the United Nations Assembly in London. I was shocked to hear today that you are taking the same attitude as the legislators of 1864 in standing for equality before the law for the Negro race, while opposing it for women. The American Delegation, as I understand it, has gone on record as favoring the adoption of the principle of Equal Rights regardless of race. What a strange position the American Republic will be placed in if it stands for justice for Negroes and not for women.
If this, by any chance, takes place, the women of the world will turn elsewhere for leaders to champion their cause. Like the sun, hope will set in the West, and rise in the East.
I am mindful that you did not champion the cause of votes for women during the long years of struggle, nor the present fight for equal opportunity and equal economic status.2 However, I hope that you will, at least, not allow your personal feelings on these matters to influence the stand of the American Delegation. The plea that women are not prepared is equally applicable to men. You cannot learn to use a tool without first having it in your hand.
Yours very truly,
Nora Stanton Barney
TLS AERP, FDRL
A few days after receiving Barney's letter, ER discussed the misunderstanding in My Day and then sent Barney the following reply.
Bodil Begtrup,3 chair of the Subcommission on the Status of Women, had proposed that the Third Committee adopt a resolution asking the General Assembly "to grant political rights to women where they had not already done so." Although ER believed that the UN Charter had already taken this step and that the committee would pass the resolution "unanimously," "much to [her] amusement," the delegate from India in her speech questioning the resolution, said that ER "felt that women were not 'ready for full political rights.'" When ER asked the delegate where she received that impression, she "discovered afterward that it was from the ladies who back the Equal Rights amendment in this country." This "amused" ER "since these ladies know quite well that I am not opposed to equal political rights for women." She concluded:
My real feeling about this resolution is that its proponents were misguided in not letting it follow the regular and orderly procedure of reference to the Economic and Social Council, from which it would have been referred to the Commission on the Status of Women. This commission could than have made concrete suggestions as to how the council might contact the individual nations which have not yet found a way to give their women political rights and urge that initial steps be taken in each particular case. This is the only practical way in which results can be obtained.4
A week later she wrote Barney directly.