1972 Women Good Or Bad

The Good, the Bad, and 1972
The year 1972 was a time full of deceit and deception by the United States government. Even though 1972 is marked by despair, peace will be imminent in the near future. In this time period, America began to gain a sense of identity. The year 1972 was the beginning of a new era of serenity due to Richard Nixon’s trip to Moscow and the proposed Equal Rights Amendment. However, the time period was also cursed by the Watergate Burglary and the Vietnam War.
In May of 1972, President Richard Nixon flew to Moscow. He met with the Soviet leader, Leonid Brezhnev, and other Soviet officials. After four days of discussion, the United States and the USSR reached many agreements, most importantly, the Strategic Arms Limitation
Treaty (SALT I). On May 26, 1972, Nixon and Brezhnev signed the SALT I treaty. This treaty mandated the number of deployment areas, interceptor missiles, and ballistic missiles that each country could have. The SALT I was the first treaty to limit nuclear warfare (Bobrow 579).
The SALT I Treaty influenced the completion of the SALT II Treaty in 1979 by Jimmy Carter, which furthered the restrictions on destructive technology. However, objections halted the ratification of the treaty completely due to the Soviets invading Afghanistan in the 1980’s. Even though the treaty did not become ratified, both the Soviet Union and the United States honored the treaty’s terms The meeting of Nixon and Brezhnev helped to build a closer relationship between the USSR and the United States, when the Soviet Union was in a hostile war with China and the United States was in the unpopular Vietnam War (Posadas). The SALT treaties have stopped further continuation of nuclear warfare in the world. Without the treaties, the United States and the entire world may have faced nuclear devastation.
In the past, women’s rights were limited in all aspects, from education to the workplace.
The Constitution did not allow women the right to vote, own property, earn equal wages, or custody of their children. The sixties were a prime example of the unequal treatment of women. A woman was quoted stating, “The female doesn't really expect a lot from life. She's here as someone's keeper — her husband's or her children's" (Coontz). Women’s lives were not deemed equally important as men’s lives. Women have been fighting for equal rights for over 200 years. In 1972, the Equal Right Amendment for women was proposed by Congress and sent to the states for ratification on March 22. The ERA granted equality of rights for all genders, and permitted that rights cannot be limited to the account of sex, or Congress can enforce legal action onto the violating party. However, when the ratification deadline passed on June 30, 1982, only thirty-five out of the thirty-eight states ratified the amendment (Francis). Therefore, the ERA was never
passed.
Even though the Equal Rights Amendment was not ratified, it sparked lobbies, marches, rallies, petitions, and civil disobedience. Many other acts protecting women have passed due to the lobbying caused by ERA supporters, for example, The Violence Against Women Act and the Community Solutions Act. However, women’s rights are still at risk. While most laws explicitly discriminating against women have been removed from the books, many areas of the current legal and judicial systems still have a differential impact on women that works to their disadvantage, because those systems have traditionally used the male experience as the norm. Without legal action of the ERA, women need fight expensive political and judicial battles to win their constitutional rights. Not ratifying the ERA lessens the United States’ position in the world. Many countries have equal justice laws, but the United does not, causing the world community to look down on the teachings of the United States legislature (Brown).
Richard Nixon was the former vice President for Dwight D. Eisenhower, and a former US navy lieutenant commander. Nixon was elected President in 1968. In 1971, The New York Times began to publish articles in which top secret Pentagon Papers were leaked by Daniel Ellsberg, a U.S. military strategist (U.S. National Archives and Records Administration). These classified documents reveal that the Vietnam War was planned and governed in secret. The Democratic National Committee, located in the Watergate building, was burglarized on June 17, 1972. The burglars were found tapping phones and stealing confidential documents and were linked with Richard Nixon’s Committee to Re-elect the President (CREEP). The break-in was part of one the biggest politic scandals in history.
With the Watergate scandal, Nixon tried to orchestrate a cover-up. There were two Washington Post reporters, Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein, who brought the scandal into the public’s eyes. The duo revealed that CREEP had a secret, slush fund that paid for all criminal activities enacted. One of the most important revelations of the Watergate trial was made by Alexander Butterfield, the former presidential appointments secretary. Butterfield disclosed to the Senate Watergate Committee, that Richard Nixon taped all conversations and phone calls in the Oval Office since 1971. In July of 1974, Nixon was forced to hand over the tapes (O’Connell).
The tapes solidified Nixon’s involvement with the Watergate break-in and other criminal activity. Nixon was the first President to resign from office. General Ford became President due to the resignation of both Nixon and his vice-president, Spiro Agnew. Sixty-nine government officials were charged with criminal activities including perjury and conspiracy. Forty-eight of the officials were found guilty. Following the Watergate Scandal, the public felt isolated from the government. The public was betrayed by their elected officials. Nonetheless, corruption is real, and 1972 was the beginning of the awakening of the public to their government’s corruption. Citizens began to pay more attention to public officials. The people demanded reform, which would limit dishonesty in politics. The scandal evoked the public to become more observant of their elected public officials. The Watergate Scandal lead to the passing of the Ethics in Government Act, the Freedom of Information Act, and the National Emergencies Act, all of which limit the Executive Branch’s power. In the long term, careers in investigative reporting and journalism increased due to Woodward and Bernstein (Zimmer).
In 1972, Vietnam was a country plagued by intense battle. The Vietnam War began in 1954 and ended in 1975, even though conflicts with Vietnam have occurred since the 1940’s. At this time period, the United States was facing a tense relationship with the Soviet Union and its allies in the Cold War. In the Vietnam War, over three million people were murdered, mostly Vietnamese citizens. In 1969, over 500,000 American military personnel were engaged in battle. President Richard Nixon ordered the removal of United States forces in 1973. Without U.S. troops, communists gained control of Saigon, Vietnam, ending the Vietnam War (“Overview of the Vietnam War”).
The Vietnam War had massive repercussions in the United States.
The U.S. economy was left in shambles due to President Lyndon B. Johnson’s unwillingness to increase taxes. Most of the population of fifty-five million were unemployed, impoverished, and suffering from the emotional and physical ramifications of the war. Men and women who have served in the Vietnam War suffer from PTSD and other psychological disorders such as, depression, anxiety, and alcohol problems (U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs). The Watergate Scandal and the Vietnam War lead to the War Power Acts which prohibits a President to send American troops into battle with consent from Congress. Voting age was reduced from 21 to 18 years old; and the military draft was based on a voluntary basis. The war scarred the United States’
internationalism.
Over two million Vietnamese were killed in the Vietnam War. Vietnam’s economy was in shambles due to their lack of industrialization. After the Vietnam War, Vietnam sold over $1 billion in American military equipment abandoned on its soil. They sold goods like rice under market prices for decades trying to regain economic balance. Hyperinflation and famine tormented Vietnam until the 1980s (“Overview of the Vietnam War”).
Vietnam was plagued with toxic soil and water. During the Vietnam War, the United States sprayed Vietnam with over nineteen million gallons of herbicides and dioxins. The herbicides poisoned the land and the people of Vietnam, even to this day. The destruction caused by Agent Orange and many biological weapon like it influenced the Soviet Union and the United States to agree to stop the use of biological weapons in warfare. Many war veterans developed cancer and unknown illness during the 1970s, as a result of their contact with the dioxins. In 1984, the Dow Chemical Company, which manufactured Agent Orange, made a $180 million settlement with veterans of the Vietnam War and their families. In 1992 the Department of Defense declared that Vietnam veterans exhibiting Hodgkin's disease, non-Hodgkin's lymphoma, soft-tissue sarcoma, chloracne, and birth defects could claim contamination by herbicides in Vietnam (Green).
1972 is deemed a year of skepticism. The Watergate Scandal and the Vietnam War have had adverse effects on the United States government and citizens. Nevertheless, peace was beginning to become apparent in 1972 with Nixon’s trip to Moscow and the Equal Rights Amendment for women. A year laced with impropriety brought tranquility in the future.