The feminist activists of the 1960s, ’70s, and early ’80s weren’t the first to push for an Equal Rights Amendment (ERA). Suffragist leader Alice Paul fought hard to pass the 19th Amendment, achieving the right to vote for women in 1920. She drafted the first ERA and introduced it to Congress in 1923.
In 1972, the House and Senate passed the ERA by the required two-thirds votes before sending it to state legislatures for ratification. Three-quarters of the states needed to ratify it; however, the ERA fell three states short by its 1982 deadline.Gloria Steinem was among the key forces behind the ERA effort in the ’70s and ’80s. Although it wasn’t ratified, most men and women were pro-ERA, Steinem says.President Richard Nixon endorsed the ERA after it was adopted with bipartisan support in both houses of Congress in 1972.The face of ERA opposition, back in the day, was Phyllis Schlafly, the conservative activist who founded the Eagle Forum. She believed that efforts to revive the ERA were ‘a colossal waste of time.’Schlafly led protests against the ERA, including this one at the White House in 1977. Moreover, supporters argue that their real opposition wasn’t Schlafly but powerful business interests.Democratic Sen. Ted Kennedy passionately spoke at an ERA fundraising dinner in Washington in 1980, championing the cause for more than three decades.Eleanor Smeal, then-president of the National Organization for Women, and first lady Betty Ford attended an ERA rally on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial in 1981.From left, Rep. Gwen Moore, Sen. Bob Menendez, and Rep. Carolyn Maloney held a news conference in 2010 outside the U.S. Capitol, calling for the passage of the ERA, which has been introduced in nearly every congressional session since 1923.ERA supporters often quote the late US Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia stating, ‘Certainly the Constitution does not require discrimination on the basis of sex. The only issue is whether it prohibits it. It doesn’t.’Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg stated, ‘If I could choose an amendment to add to this Constitution, it would be the Equal Rights Amendment.’
