Expanded women's rights, report says

ERA in states is praised

WASHINGTON Equal rights amendments put into state constitutions have expanded the rights of women rather than eroded them as critics claim, the women's year commission reports.

"Fairer decisions on divorce to homemak→ ers, to children and to husbands are resulting from state ERAs," the report says.

An analysis of the impact of language banning sex discrimination in 15 states was conducted by the Women's Law Project of Philadelphia. The analysis was in a report released this week by the National Commission on the Observance of International Women's Year.

The commission said the analysis knocks down predictions by ERA critics that the amendment would lead to homosexual marriages, a ban on separate bathrooms and elimination of husbands' support of their spouses.

"No laws prohibiting homosexual marriage

have been invalidated and no laws providing for separate toilets have been overturned," the commission said in a final report to President Ford.

"Rape' laws have not been invalidated by state ERAS," it said. "State courts in Colorado, Illinois, Maryland and Texas have all upheld rape provisions protecting only women and penalizing men, or penalizing men more severely."

Pennsylvania's state Supreme Court has issued rulings on the five-year-old state ERA which have substantially improved the status of homemakers and mothers, said Marie R. Kenney, director of the state commission for

women.

In child support cases, the court said, a homemaker's care of the children must be considered an economic contribution in assessing support obligations, she said.

"For the first time, a woman's work in the home is legally recognized."