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In 1980, China had paid lip service to women by saying "women hold up half the sky." Yet when the United Nations declared the 1980's "The Decade of Women," we wondered if things were any different here versus elsewhere?

While men of one nation squared off against men of another nation, the women's stake in the struggle seemed different and even vague. Is a woman whose rights are denied in the name of Islam all that different from a woman whose rights are denied in the name of Christ? When men are the exclusive interpreters of authority, be it religious or secular, do women feel a stake in the outcome?

Fundamentalism is fundamentalism and one of the fundamentals of fundamentalism is that women are fundamentally at the bottom of the heap. Why is that so? God, who conveniently is a "man," said so. How do we know? A person of authority, coincidentally also a man, interpreted it in that way.

On July 9, 1978, a Women's Suffrage banner that had rarely been seen outside of a museum since the 1920's, once again saw the light day. Old and venerable, the purple and gold colors of the National Women's Party moved down the Capital Mall as over 100,000 of us stepped into herstory.

Dressed all in white-the suffragist colors-we marched to peaceably ask for an extension on the ratification of the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA).

The Mall was filled to capacity. Surely the numbers were enormous. There were those who had rallied there the day Martin Luther King had declared "I Have a Dream." These witnesses were sure that this day would equal that one, but the Park Officials said otherwise.