Equal Rights Amendment

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Equal Rights Amendment

Legislation

By: Martha Griffiths, Birch Bayh and Marlow Cook

Date: 1972

Source: 92nd U.S. Congress. Equal Rights Amendment. United States Statutes at Large. volume 86, pages 1523-1524, 1972.

About the Author: Democratic United States Representative Martha Griffiths of Michigan, Democratic Senator Birch Bayh of Indiana, and Republican Senator Marlow Cook of Kentucky took the language of the Equal Rights Amendment, originally written in 1921 and substantially revised in 1950, and made changes to help foster its successful passage in both the House and Senate in 1972.

INTRODUCTION

Alice Paul, a highly educated Quaker woman who earned five degrees, including a master of laws and a Ph.D. in economics, joined the National American Women's Suffrage Association in 1910; she left six years later to found the National Women's Party. In 1921, one year after the Nineteenth Amendment guaranteed women the right to vote, Paul penned the "Equal Rights Amendment," which read: "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 read the proposed amendment at a 1923 convention in Seneca Falls, New York, during the seventy-fifth anniversary of the first women's rights convention in the same town in 1848.

Designed to give American women equal protection under the law in such areas as employment, family law, education, and civil society, the Equal Rights Amendment was introduced to Congress in 1923 by Senate Republican Whip Charles Curtis and Representative Daniel R. Anthony, Susan B. Anthony's nephew. For the next forty-nine years proponents of the amendment submitted it to Congress for passage; finally in 1972 the joint efforts of Democratic Representative Martha Griffiths, Democratic Senator Birch Bayh, and Republican Senator Marlow Cook led to a draft of language that helped facilitate its passage. Griffiths had been widely credited with inserting language on gender protection into the Civil Rights Act of 1964, and the ERA helped reinforce her reputation as a women's rights legislator.

Senator Sam Ervin and Representative Emmanuel Cellar added a seven-year clause to the amendment: Thirty-eight states had to ratify the ERA within seven years for the amendment to be added to the Constitution. This tactic had been used on the Nineteenth Amendment as well, though many women's groups viewed it as unfair. March 22, 1979 became the ERA deadline.

PRIMARY SOURCE

SECTION 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.

SECTION 2. The Congress shall have the power to enforce, by appropriate legislation, the provisions of this article.

SECTION 3. This amendment shall take effect two years after the date of ratification.

SIGNIFICANCE

In 1972, Phyllis Schlafly, best-selling conservative author and activist, created the National Committee to Stop the ERA and established the Eagle Forum, a conservative response to the Equal Rights Amendment. Schlafly's primary argument against the ERA was that the 1963 Equal Pay Act and the 1964 Civil Rights Act provided enough gender protection for women; the ERA would not only duplicate those laws, but would also, by using the word "sex" in the amendment, open the door for federal acceptance of gay rights.

By 1977, thirty-five states had ratified the Equal Rights Amendment; with three more the amendment's adoption would be complete. The National Organization for Women, founded in 1966, poured money and time into grass roots campaigns in each state to push for ratification. Rallied by the amendment and the belief that the ERA would be the final push for legislative equality, in February 1977 NOW encouraged a boycott of all states that had not ratified the amendment.

At the same time, Phyllis Schlafly and other conservative groups worked to prevent the ERA's ratification. By arguing that gender equality would force women into the military, including combat, and to lose preferential treatment in child custody cases, Schlafly and her organizations helped stall the ERA's momentum. Despite a three-year extension, the ERA never gained the thirty-eight states needed, remaining instead three states shy. As of June 30, 1982, the Equal Rights Amendment officially timed out.

On March 15, 2005, Democratic Senator Ted Kennedy of Massachusetts and Democratic Representative Carolyn Maloney of New York introduced the Equal Rights Amendment to Congress once again using the "three-state strategy," an argument written by law students in 1995. This maintains that the Twenty-Seventh Amendment—the 1992 amendment regarding Congressional pay raises—actually began its ratification process in 1789 and was not fully ratified until 203 years later. Using this precedent, the strategy further maintains that the original thirty-five state ratifications are still valid and that time should be extended indefinitely to allow three more to ratify the amendment. Despite legal challenges and questions, feminist groups and supporters continue to push for the ERA's adoption using this argument.

FURTHER RESOURCES

Books

Becker, Susan D. The Origins of the Equal Rights Amendment: American Feminism Between the Wars. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1981.

Cobble, Dorothy Sue. The Other Women's Movement: Workplace Justice and Social Rights in Modern America. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2004.

Felder, Deborah G. A Century of Women: The Most Influential Events in Twentieth-Century Women's History. Kensington Publishing Corp., 1999.

Friedan, Betty. The Feminine Mystique. New York: W.W. Norton, 2001.

Millet, Kate. Sexual Politics. Champlaign, IL: University of Illinois Press, 2000.