Equal Rights Amendment

Beginning in 1789 with Abigail Adams's stirring call to her husband, John, to remember the ladies, the place of women within the Constitution has been a subject of debate in American society. Prior to the Civil War, Elizabeth Cady Stanton led a group of women to Seneca Falls, New York, to protest women's exclusion from the Constitution. The Seneca Falls convention drafted a declaration aimed at the federal government that called for the inclusion of women as citizens. During the war, the women's movement put their own goals on hold to support the nation, only to find at the end of the war that they were not to be included in the Union victory. Debate over the language of the proposed Fourteenth Amendment giving black men citizenship split the women's movement into two groups, the National Woman Suffrage Association (NAWSA) led by Elizabeth Cady Stanton and the American Woman Suffrage Association (AWSA) led by Henry Ward Beecher.

In the early 20th century, a revived woman's movement began to lobby for an amendment granting women suffrage. While women as a whole could not agree on support for issues like temperance, civic responsibility, and prostitution, they agreed that gaining the vote was the only way for women to have any voice in the political process. The successful passage of the suffrage amendment in 1920, as well as the amendment favoring the prohibition of alcohol sales, convinced many feminists that constitutional amendment was their best option for social change.

Unfortunately, the reality was that after the passage of the suffrage amendment, the shaky coalition within the women's movement threatened to break down once again. The largest section within the movement believed that women and their children deserved protection from the government so that they could not be exploited. These women focused on the issue of child labor and proposed a child labor amendment that would outlaw the practice. A smaller group of feminists argued in favor of complete equality for women. These women insisted that without equality women would remain in a state of second-class citizenship. This group, led by staunch feminist Alice Paul, proposed a new constitutional amendment in 1923. The text of the amendment read as follows: “Equality of rights under the law shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any state on account of sex.”

Finally, on March 22, 1972, after much debate over wording and stipulations, Congress approved the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA) and sent it to the states for ratification. Feminists were convinced that the amendment would be approved long before the 7-year deadline for ratification that had been imposed on it. Unfortunately, ERA advocates grossly underestimated the resistance at the grassroots level to the idea of equal rights. Phyllis Schlafly and other ERA opponents organized national resistance by speaking across the country and publishing newsletters and periodicals like the Phyllis Schlafly Report. Schlafly was denounced by her feminist critics for her vitriolic statements that the ERA would remove social and economic protection for women, but her words resonated with many women. These women feared that the ERA would force women to serve in the military, deprive them of their husband's financial support, and force them out of their homes and into the workplace.

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