THE EQUAL RIGHTS AMENDMENT

The Amendment

Debate over ratification of the Equal Rights Amendment provided one of the key political struggles of the 1970s. Congress passed the Equal Rights Amendment in 1972. However, before it could become part of the Constitution, it had to be ratified by three-fourths (thirty-eight) of the states. The text of the amendment was simple:

1. Equality of rights under the law shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of sex.
2. The Congress shall have the power to enforce, by appropriate legislation, the provisions of this article.
3. This amendment shall take effect two years after the date of ratification.

Quick Support in 1972

Congress first considered an equal rights amendment in 1923, and the proposal came up regularly after that. Proponents never overcame the opposition of social reformers and labor unions concerned about how the ERA would affect labor legislation protecting women and children. By 1972 organized labor dropped its objections, and in March of that year Congress passed the ERA. The only contentious issue was whether the amendment should explicitly exclude women from the military draft. ERA proponents objected to any special treatment and managed to defeat the provision. Many states were eager to ratify the ERA. Twenty-five minutes after it passed Congress, both houses of the Hawaii legislature voted unanimously for the amendment. By early 1973 twenty-five of the required thirty-eight states had ratified it.

Slowing Down

Ratification slowed after that, how-ever. Ten more states ratified the amendment by the end of 1977, leaving the amendment only three states short of adoption. Proponents were able to get Congress to extend the original 1979 deadline for ratification to 1982. However, no state ratified it after 1977, and three states rescinded their ratification (although it was not clear that they could legally do this). In 1982 the amendment died.

What Happened?

The Equal Rights Amendment always had support from a majority of Americans, both men and women. However, ratifying a constitutional amendment requires more than majority support. It requires that proponents secure majority support in each of three-fourths of the states. An amendment must have extraordinarily broad support and little concerted opposition. Opponents of the ERA were able to emphasize several key issues that stopped ratification. These issues were most important in conservative southern states. Many Americans feared changes in the roles of men and women, especially in families. Phyllis Schlafly, a politically active conservative woman, organized the STOP ERA campaign based on these concerns. Opponents convinced people that the ERA would bring radical changes to their lives: an end to husbands' obligations to support their wives and families, single-sex bathrooms, the drafting of women into the military. These claims about the effects of the ERA were exaggerated, but they struck a responsive chord among Americans concerned about families and the changing roles of men and women in society. They were enough to generate concerted opposition in the conservative southern states that had not yet ratified the ERA.

Public Opinion and the ERA

A substantial majority of Americans favored the ERA during the whole time the states were considering ratification. However, saying they supported the ERA meant that they agreed in principle to equality, not that they supported changing the traditional roles of men and women. For example, a 1977 poll revealed that 66 percent of Americans who supported the ERA also believed that a preschool child would suffer if the' child's mother worked. Sixty-two percent said that if there are a limited number of jobs, a married woman should not be employed if her husband is able to support her. Fifty-five percent believed that it is more important for a wife to support her husband's career than to have one herself.

Waiting for Changes in State Legislatures;

Recognizing the importance and difficulty of winning in all regions, few proponents of the ERA supported working on the amendment again. They argued instead that it was more important to work on election of women to state legislatures. State legislatures are responsible for many policies that affect women, such as family and divorce law, welfare, and equal employment. They felt that electing women to the legislatures would accomplish more than would enacting an Equal Rights Amendment.

Source:

Jane J. Mansbridge, Why We Lost the ERA (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1986).

Equal Rights Amendment. The Equal Rights Amendment (ERA), written by Alice Paul and sponsored by the National Woman's Party, was first proposed in 1923, on the seventy‐fifth anniversary of the 1848 Seneca Falls women's rights convention.Inspired by the Nineteenth Amendment, which had just secured equal suffrage for women, it was intended to push the feminist cause beyond political equality. The original wording declared that “men and women shall have equal rights throughout the United States and in every place subject to its jurisdiction.” The ERA, which if ratified would have called into question the entire body of special protective labor legislation for women workers, created acrimonious divisions among former suffragists for four decades. Nonetheless, Paul and her small band of followers pushed the ERA year after year, in 1940 securing Republican party endorsement. Serious prospects for the amendment developed in 1966, when a new feminist generation took up the cause. Now the wording demanded that “equal rights under the law shall not be abridged or denied on account of sex,” thus assuming that the purpose of the law was not to advance equality but to look without distinction at men and women. Carried forward by the energies of a new feminist wave, the ERA won quick congressional approval in 1972, but in the process stimulated an aggressive opposition, led by right‐wing activist Phyllis Schlafly, who claimed that ratification would mean unisex toilets, gay marriages, and women in combat. Despite a congressionally authorized extension of the process to 1982, only thirty states ratified the amendment and it died. Nonetheless, the ERA campaign had important results: It helped to build both the feminist and antifeminist movements; and in its wake, judicial decisions regarding sex discrimination were significantly liberalized, in large part based on an expansive new reading of the Fourteenth Amendment.
See also Conservatism; Feminism; Muller v. Oregon; Seneca Falls Convention; Women in the Labor Force; Women's Rights Movements.

Bibliography

Joan Hoff‐Wilson , Rights of Passage: The Past and the Future of the ERA, 1986.

Ellen C. DuBois