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| Alice Paul |
A proposed amendment to the Constitution of the United
States to provide for the equality of sexes under the law. The central language
of the amendment states: “Equality of rights under the law shall not be denied
or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of sex.” The ERA
would have made unconstitutional any laws that grant one sex different rights
than the other.
In 1916 Alice Paul, a leader in the suffragist movement,
founded the National Woman's Party (NWP), a political party dedicated to
establishing equal rights for women. Paul viewed equality under the law as the
foundation essential to full equality for women. Along with her colleagues,
Paul began to work on constitutional amendments recognizing equal rights for
women at both state and federal levels. In 1921 various groups, which two years
before had been close allies of the NWP, fiercely opposed the NWP's proposed
language banning “political, civil or legal disabilities or inequalities on
account of sex, or on account of marriage unless applying alike to both sexes.”
Labor organizers and others fighting for women's economic welfare believed this
push for legal equality threatened legislation that had been passed to protect
exploited women working in factories. While Paul was not opposed to improving
oppressive conditions in industry, she and other like-minded women argued that
the laws designed to protect women could be used to restrict their employment
opportunities.
Despite strong opposition by some women and men, the NWP
introduced an Equal Rights Amendment to the U.S. Constitution in 1923. In order
to become law, the amendment needed a two-thirds vote in both houses of the
Congress of the United States, or a supporting petition of two-thirds of the
state legislatures. Then the amendment would have required ratification by
three-fourths of the states. However, it failed to get the two-thirds majority
required to move on to the states for approval. The proposed amendment also
failed in subsequent sessions until 1972, when it won a majority vote in
Congress.
By the 1960s, the political atmosphere regarding the status
of women in the United States had changed dramatically. An influential book by
Betty Friedan, The Feminine Mystique (1963), challenged traditional attitudes
about women, and the civil rights movement had given women a model upon which
they could base their own fight for equal rights. The National Organization for
Women (NOW), formed in 1966, made the ERA central to its mission. Within a few
years the ERA had won the support of both the Democratic and Republican
parties. When the ERA came before Congress in 1972, it had the support of
President Richard Nixon. It received the needed two-thirds majority of both houses,
including the votes of all but eight senators. The proposed amendment quickly
moved to the states in the second phase of the amendment process.
Opposition to the ERA in the 1970s was similar in some ways
to opposition in the 1920s. Conservative politicians and organizations voiced
strong opposition to the amendment. Phyllis Schlafly, one of the amendment's
most vocal opponents, founded Stop ERA, a group that worked to defeat the
amendment. Schlafly alleged that the ERA would force women to take on roles
normally reserved for men and that equal rights meant women would give up the
“privileges” of womanhood. She and others also appealed to opponents of
abortion, arguing that the ERA would bar any restrictions on abortion. Despite
this opposition, by March 1974 the amendment had been ratified by 33 of the
required 38 states. A congressional mandate had set March 1979 as the deadline
for ratification; by June 1978, only two additional states had approved the
ERA. Ceding to popular sentiment, Congress granted a three-year, two-month
extension for approval, yet not one additional state ratified the measure in
that time. Ten years and two months after its first passage by Congress, the
ERA failed to become to part of the constitution. Since its defeat, the ERA has
been reintroduced in each opening session of Congress, and 16 states now
guarantee equality of the sexes in their state constitutions.
(Encarta
Encyclopedia & Wikipedia)