ERA Threatens Wives' and Widows' Social Security Benefits

by Phyllis Schlafly

     Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg has made it clear that ERA would abolish the homemaker wife's and widow's benefits in Social Security.  This is the benefit that most mothers and grandmothers rely on.
     The Social Security Act is sex-neutral -- employed women receive exactly the same Social Security benefits as employed men.
 
     But what about the homemaker wife who is financially dependent on her husband for much or most of her life, who may work in the labor force only a few years or only part-time, and therefore does not build up enough credits in Social Security to receive a significant retirement check based on her own earnings?  The Social Security System recognizes her value by giving the homemaker "wife" a check for 50% of her husband's benefit over and above the check he receives.  Upon her husband's death, the widow receives the full benefit that her husband had been receiving.  (The law also gives this benefit to a dependent husband, but we know that nearly all dependent spouses are women.)
 

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