![]() Today, most of those "weird" changes are legal, says Ting Ting Cheng, director of the ERA Project at Columbia Law School's Center for Gender and Sexuality Law. Reporting on the fight against ratification in 1979, NPR's Cokie Roberts explained, "They worry about losing financial support, women in combat, co-ed bathrooms, homosexual marriage, and a host of other weird and threatening changes in the society." ![]() That wasn't all that would change, according to Schlafly and other ERA opponents. "This is exactly and precisely what we will lose if the Equal Rights Amendment is passed." "Since the women are the ones who bear the babies and there's nothing we can do about that, our laws and customs then make it the financial obligation of the husband to provide the support," Schlafly said in 1973. Poised and politically savvy, Schlafly opposed the ERA. ![]() But then it got to the southern states, "and Phyllis Schlafly came into the picture." "You had to come in the back door and you had to be escorted by a man, even if you were a professor."ĮRA proponents like Mansbridge were optimistic as they watched the amendment sail through state legislatures, she said. She's now a professor at the Harvard Kennedy School of Government and the author of Why We Lost The ERA. "You may not believe this, but women were not allowed in the front door of the Harvard Faculty Club," said Jane Mansbridge, remembering her days as a graduate student. Until 1978, being pregnant could get you fired. Until 1974, banks made it tough for women to get credit cards. She rewrote the text in 1943 and the language remains to this day: "Equality of rights under the law shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any state on account of sex."īut discrimination continued. Alice Paul, an American Quaker suffragist, first introduced the ERA to Congress in 1923. ![]() But last year, the House passed a joint resolution to remove the deadline, which President Joe Biden says he supports.Īs written, the proposed Equal Rights Amendment is a pretty simple idea. The Trump Justice Department advised that because the deadline had passed, Congress needed to go back to the drawing board. There are people suing to push the ERA through, and those pushing to have it blocked. Five states have tried to rescind their ratification, though it's not clear from the Constitution if this is possible. "We were protesting outside of the Capitol, delivering letters, spamming voicemails," she said.Įven with the Virginia vote two years ago, victory may be a long way off. She believes Generation Ratify's advocacy work made a difference in Virginia. Couture co-founded Generation Ratify, a youth-led organization to advance gender equality legislation. "At first I was just shocked, and then I was really angry," she said. When she learned about the ERA a few years ago, she couldn't believe it wasn't already in the Constitution. High school Rosie Couture didn't think so. So when in 2020 Virginia became the final state needed to ratify the ERA, it was almost 40 years too late. It said 38, or 3/4 of the states, had to ratify the proposed amendment by 1979. Yet the ERA was never added to the Constitution - because Congress also set a deadline. Senate passed the Equal Rights Amendment, following the lead of the House of Representatives and paving the way for it to become the 28th Amendment to the U.S. A large crowd of women cheers a speaker at the Lincoln Memorial, during a rally for passage of the Equal Rights Amendment.įifty years ago today, the U.S.
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