The Equal Rights Amendment

When the Nineteenth Amendment finally passed in 1920, Alice Paul was only thirty-five years old and would live another fifty-seven years, to the age of ninety-two. So what did she do for the last half century of her life?

Paul believed the Nineteenth Amendment was a great achievement, but that it could not change centuries of bias and discrimination toward women. She looked at the cluster of amendments that had been passed to ensure the rights of African Americans after the Civil War—the Thirteenth, Fourteenth, and Fifteenth—and concluded that women needed something similar. The only right guaranteed to women in the US Constitution is the right to vote.

In July 1923, which marked the seventy-fifth anniversary of the Seneca Falls Convention, the leaders of the National Woman’s Party, including Paul, called a convention to discuss discrimination against women. At the convention, Paul proposed an amendment—then known as the “Lucretia Mott Amendment”—to the Constitution:

Men and women shall have equal rights throughout the United States and every place subject to its jurisdiction. Congress shall have power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation.

Paul understood that without a constitutional amendment guaranteeing equal rights, women were largely unable to defend themselves against discrimination in federal courts. Until the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA), as it came to be known, passed, women would not be equal to men. Paul spent the rest of her life fighting for its approval.

As with the 19th amendment, many women fought against the amendment. Some women reformers felt the ERA would hurt the hard- fought gains women had made in laws protecting women and children in the workplace. Other women felt the ERA would destroy their ability to be supported by their husbands and be sent into combat.

In the early 1940’s the Republican Party and the Democratic Party added support of the Equal Rights Amendment to their party platforms. That meant that both political parties were showing political support for the amendment.  Alice Paul rewrote the amendment to reflect the 15th and the 19th Amendments: "Equality of rights under the law shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any state because sex." The bill from then on became known as the “Alice Paul” Amendment.

In the 1960’s a new women’s rights movement took shape.  Women began demanding equality under the law and the ERA gained more and more support.  Finally, on March 22, 1972, forty-nine years after the Equal Rights Amendment was introduced in Congress, it passed in the U.S. Senate and the House of Representatives. The proposed 27th Amendment to the Constitution now had to be ratified (passed) by three quarters of the states to become the law of the land, and it had to happen within the standard seven-year ratification deadline. Thirty-eight states had to ratify it by 1979.

In the first year, twenty-two states ratified the ERA. But after that the process slowed.

When the seven-year deadline arrived, the ERA was three states short. Under great public pressure, Congress extended the deadline another three years, until June 30, 1982. Unfortunately, no other state signed on during the extension despite protests, marches, civil disobedience and hunger strikes, the ERA has never been approved.

Paul died in 1977, the same year Indiana became the thirty-fifth, and final, state to ratify the ERA. In 1980, to make matters worse, The Republican Party removed the Equal Rights Amendment from their platform, meaning the party would no longer support or push for this amendment. Despite many women’s groups and others supporting it, the country was becoming more politically conservative with religious and business groups fighting against passage. However, supporters of the ERA never stopped working.

In 2006 to help survivors of sexual violence, particularly Black women and girls find resources to help them with the healing process, the Me-Too movement was created.  In 2017 women started to come forward in record numbers to expose the sexual assault and sexual harassment they faced in the workplace and the #Metoo movement became headline news and energized the effort to pass the ERA.

In 2017 Nevada ratified the ERA, followed in 2018 by Illinois. The total number of states ratifying the ERA was 37, one short of the 38 states needed for passage.

Hopes were high that state would be Virginia, who would be taking up the bill early in 2019.  A poll undertaken in December,2018 revealed that 81% of Virginia voters supported passage of the ERA. Then the bill was passed in the Virginia Senate with 7 Republican Senators voting in favor along with all 19 Democrats. Passage looked good in the Virginia House of delegates. Republicans controlled the house 51-49 so only two Republican defections were needed. But too much disappointment, only one Republican defected resulting in a 50-50 tie and defeat. For all intents the ERA was dead in Virginia.

But then as fate would have it, the Virginia Democrats won both the House and the State Senate in the November 2019 elections.  For the first time since 1994,  Democrats took full control of state government and made passage of the ERA one of their first goals in office.

True to their word on Jan. 15,  2020 the Virginia House  voted to approve the Equal Rights Amendmen providing legal rights for all American citizens regardless of sex. The passage marked a historic moment  in the nearly century-long effort to add protections for women to the U.S. Constitution.

Numerous legal hurdles still have to be overcome  and legal challenges about the deadlines for ratification will be filed.

When our suffragist mothers wrote the Declaration of Sentiments, they understood they would never see their work completed in their lifetime. It was their hope that the daughters and sons 100 years later would pick up where they left off and continue the work for full equality for women. We are those children.

A record number of women were elected to Congress in 2018. Women are running in record numbers for President. Women have found their voice and continue to grow their power.

The ERA will “celebrate” its 100th birthday in 2023. The supporters of ratification of the ERA go on with the fight. More and more women will be elected on both a national and local basis and it is the grass roots support of local and state officials that will ultimately end with successful ratification of the ERA.

And never forget what Susan B. Anthony said, “Failure is not an Option.”