Mrs Amer­i­ca is a pow­er­ful look at the nev­er-end­ing fight for equal rights

Activist house­wife Phyl­lis Schlafly doesn’t have the same glob­al name recog­ni­tion as fem­i­nist icons Bet­ty Friedan or Glo­ria Steinem, nev­er­the­less, her work fight­ing against the Equal Rights Amend­ment (ERA) in the 1970s has far-reach­ing cul­tur­al and polit­i­cal con­se­quences that can still be felt today. This nine-part FX on Hulu lim­it­ed series charts events in a decade that saw the women’s lib move­ment shift the tide in Amer­i­ca, despite fac­ing stiff oppo­si­tion from the so-called sweet­heart of the silent majority.

Series cre­ator Dahvi Waller cap­tures both sides of the fight, depict­ing not only the over­all con­flict but the every­day quar­rels with­in each group. Unlike, say, The Crown, which cov­ers a sprawl­ing time­frame and often fails to con­nect each indi­vid­ual episode, Mrs Amer­i­ca lands its emo­tion­al beats with­in the sig­nif­i­cant his­tor­i­cal con­text of the strug­gle for equal­i­ty via the rat­i­fi­ca­tion of the ERA.

Lead­ing the bat­tle against the ​“Lib­bers” is Schlafly (Cate Blanchett), who anchors real-life inci­dents which most view­ers will at least have a cur­so­ry knowl­edge of. Her claim ear­ly in the first episode that she has nev­er been dis­crim­i­nat­ed against on the basis of gen­der is imme­di­ate­ly met with a sex­ist inter­ac­tion, which she fake-smiles her way through. An often infu­ri­at­ing fig­ure who for­ward­ed her own agen­da, it would be easy to paint Schlafly as a Wicked Witch of the Mid­west. Yet Blanchett plays her with an unshak­able con­vic­tion and enough cracks in her armour to imbue her with humanity.

Brief flash­es of sym­pa­thy are lit­tered through­out this sto­ry, although it is hard to ignore the posi­tion of priv­i­lege and pow­er that allowed her to fight against a plat­form intent on help­ing all women with­out becom­ing enraged. Thank­ful­ly, Mrs Amer­i­ca doesn’t side­step the oppor­tu­ni­ties Schlafly had or how her polit­i­cal ambi­tion in the first episode leads her to make the fight against the ERA her num­ber one cause. Defend­ing the US from the Sovi­et threat turns into a desire to pro­tect house­wives from ​“mis­er­able, pathet­ic women.”

Else­where, Rose Byrne has an uncan­ny resem­blance to the fem­i­nist leader Glo­ria Steinem, con­vey­ing her frus­tra­tion at the polit­i­cal pow­er games her group are forced to play, while Tracey Ull­man steals every scene as the ​“moth­er” of sec­ond-wave fem­i­nism, Bet­ty Friedan. Eliz­a­beth Banks, play­ing pro­gres­sive Repub­li­can Jill Ruck­elshaus, shows that there was a time when bipar­ti­san sup­port wasn’t a pipedream.

Oth­er stand­outs include Emmy-win­ner Uzo Adu­ba as trail­blaz­er Shirley Chisholm, Niecy Nash as activist Flo Kennedy, Mar­go Martindale’s tough but hilar­i­ous depic­tion of Bel­la Abzug. Sarah Paul­son adds a cer­tain grav­i­tas as fic­ti­tious house­wife Alice Macray, and Melanie Lynskey pro­vides the comedic relief as antag­o­nist Rose­mary Thomson.

At the Tele­vi­sion Crit­ics’ Asso­ci­a­tion pan­el held ear­li­er this year, Waller called the series an ​“ori­gin sto­ry of today’s cul­ture wars – you can draw a direct line from 1970 to today through Schlafly and real­ly under­stand how we became such a divid­ed nation.” At times some of the know­ing winks to present-day par­al­lels feel a lit­tle laboured, even if it is telling that very lit­tle has changed in some polit­i­cal arenas.

Civ­il rights, les­bian rights and abor­tion access are all plat­forms jostling for atten­tion. Inter­sec­tion­al­i­ty is vital to the fem­i­nist move­ment but not every­one has been treat­ed equal and this show suc­cess­ful­ly depicts how dif­fer­ent agen­das are giv­en more weight caus­ing rifts from with­in. ​“How long are we sup­posed to wait?,” Glo­ria asks in the sec­ond episode. The answer remains unclear – but the women of Mrs Amer­i­ca are an echo in his­to­ry we must not ignore.

The first three episodes of Mrs Amer­i­ca will be avail­able on FX on Hulu on 15 April.