By Father Joel Mounzing , OFM

“I’d march in the parade even if there was a blizzard!” That’s what Miss Mary Lou Kenner vowed, gritting her teeth as she spoke.

She said it the day before she joined some 500 young women on the Georgia State Capitol to press for a yes vote on the Equal Rights Amendment, which was later turned down by the state House of Representatives in a 104-70 vote.

Pretty, slim and trim in her neat, red plaid slacks – radiating self-discipline – she walked gingerly into her office a the Department of Nursing at Georgia State University.

Relaxed at her desk, her words came fast but with perfectly cadenced diction: “Basically, equal rights means that if any woman feels that she is discriminated against because of her sex, that she has a right, under law, to challenge that discrimination.” Bothered by the plague of misunderstanding in circulation about the ERA, a clear definition of what ERA is all about, she thought, was fundamental to talking about the subject.

As a nurse-instructor at Georgia State and the chief ERA representative for the Nurses Association of the State of Georgia, she minced no words to clarify what ERA even meant for nurses: “What the Nurses’ Association wants for nurses, as professional people, are across-the-board benefits, taking into account educational background differentials.

“Most nurse-specialists have a major degree; we are clinical specialists, administrators and educators. We have as much education and put in longer hours than most professionals in other fields but receive less pay. If a nurse with an educational background were to work in a hospital under ordinary circumstances she would receive the ordinary pay.”

A check in the Atlanta area disclosed that the average salary for a nurse is $650 a month.

In analyzing the defeat suffered in Georgia by the ERA, Miss Keener said: “In my opinion Georgia is basically a rural state. As a consequence there is a struggle going on between the country boys and the city boys. And whenever there is polarization, they are going to spin their wheels without action.”

She regrets her Church’s official silence on ERA.

“I believe that the Church should make a statement…on the basis of principle: that all are created equal under God.”

Miss Keener is a graduate of St. Agnes elementary and high schools in Flint, Michigan, and the Catholic University School of Nursing in Washington.