Equal Rights Amendment Analysis

The ERA is a proposed amendment made to guarantee equal rights to all U.S. citizens no matter the sex. In 1872 when the issue was introduced to congress it was quickly sent out to the states to get the opinion of the amendment. Many states ratified the amendment shortly after it was sent out. The United

The Equal Rights Amendment (ERA) was defeated because of its popularity throughout its ratification and women opposing the Amendment itself. The ERA was an Amendment introduced to the United States that gave equal rights to every gender. This meant that there would be no differences between a male and a female in terms of divorce, work, etc. This Amendment was seen as the only way to eliminate gender discrimination. In 1923 the idea was first brought to Congress by a group called the National Women’s Party. However, amending the Constitution is a very difficult process. First, Congress present the Amendment and get a majority vote of two-thirds from the House and the Senate. After the Amendment is passed by Congress then it must be ratified by three-fourths of the states. Even though Congress passed the ERA and the future seemed bright. The states did not ratify the Amendment. Therefore, the Amendment died off by 1982.

What could be more important than the equality of rights for all American citizens? Women have tried without success for 80 years to be acknowledged as equals in our Constitution through an Equal Rights Amendment (ERA). Currently there is nothing in the United States Constitution that guarantees a woman the same rights as a man. The only equality women have with men is the right to vote. In order to protect women’s rights on the same level as men, I am in favor of an Equal Rights Amendment to the U.S. Constitution today.

The Equal Rights Amendment is a proposed amendment to the U.S. Constitution that declares the “Equality of rights under the law shall not be abridged by the United States or by any State on account of sex.” To propose an amendment, ⅔ of both the Houses need to vote. To ratify an amendment, ¾ of state legislatures need to agree. In 1972, Congress passed the ERA and approved it for

Equal rights have long been sought out by the people of America and they continue to be chased after today. Several of our freedoms were originally seen by the Constitutional to be inalienable, so ingrained in what the founding fathers saw as American values that the Bill of Rights has set them in stone. Unfortunately for some, universal suffrage was not one of those rights. While voting was largely limited at the founding of America, citizens, namely white males, slowly gained the right to vote without discrimination towards age or social status. However, women remained barred from the ballot, regardless of race. Though the suffrage movement started as a woman’s social movement, it evolved into a driving force that would hold the power to put in place a nineteenth constitutional amendment.

The Equal Protection Clause derives from the Fourteenth Amendment, which specifies “no state shall deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws…” As a part of the Reconstruction Amendments, the aforementioned clause was meant to ensure racial equality in the Reconstruction Period and has been applied successfully against the affirmative action. Introduced in United States v. Carolene Products Co., the strict scrutiny has been applied to the cases, in which a fundamental constitutional rights have been infringed or a government action applies to a suspect classification (i.e. race, religion, national background). Specifically, in regards to Bakke v. Regents of University of California, the Supreme Court (“the Court”) concluded that, considering that the University of California, Davis received several Caucasian applicants for its special admission program in 1973 and 1974 and that none of the applicants received the admission to the program since the start, the program unfairly administered in favor of minority races and, therefore, violated the rights of the white applicants under the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. Furthermore, from Hopwood v. State of Texas, the Fifth Circuit Court ruled under strict scrutiny that, the affirmative action imposed by the University of Texas School of Law (“the law school”) violates the Fourteenth Amendment since neither the law school nor the University of Texas system has proved a proof of

For quite a long time, women have wanted to receive the same treatment as men. When African American men were able to vote, women wanted to be able to vote as well. When World War II was in progress, women would work in the factories while their husbands, brothers and fathers were fighting in the war. Women were tired of being treated differently and not having the same rights as men, so they wanted to conceive an amendment that would force people to treat them as equally as men and anyone else. This amendment was called the Equal Rights Amendment. On March 22, 1972, the equal rights amendment, E.R.A., was passed by the United States Senate and was sent to the states for ratification. Thirty states ratified the amendment but then a

Since the 1920’s, women have been fighting for equal rights. Women’s groups spent decades working to pass laws that would ban gender discrimination. Finally, in 1972, the Equal Rights Amendment was passed by Congress even though

In the year 1923, Alice Paul, a famous suffragette, proposed an amendment to the Congress of the United States of America that would explicitly require the United States government to treat men and women equally. This proposed amendment, commonly referred to by the masses as the Equal Rights Amendment, reads as the following:

The ERA was introduced in every Congress since 1923, and yet it still failed to gain ratification. The ERA was the Equal Rights Amendment, which means that equality of rights under the law shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any state on account of sex. I believe it was never passed because of many reasons. One reason was because some ERA supports got offended by other supports who were very obnoxious, which was a backlash on feminist tactics. (Doc. E & F) Another is that men and women might switch places, and it would be a threat to traditional roles.(Doc. J &M) My last reason for why the ERA was defeated is because since men and women would have equal rights, the women could also be drafted and serve the country.

The equal protection clause of the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution was at first created to protect against racial discrimination, but the Supreme Court later expanded the clause to also providing equal treatment amongst different races. The clause says, “No state shall…deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws” (U.S. Constitution. Art./Amend. XIV, Sec. 1.) A person could not be discriminated upon solely because of his or her race and if the law treated a group of people differently, then a valid reason for the discrepancy of different treatment must exist. Racial minorities, but mainly women, have historically been subjected and made vulnerable to harsh restrictions on activities such as voting, attending college, and working as lawyers. These restrictions, based on stereotypes overlooked the actual capability and potential of each individual woman. For many cases dealing with discrimination of women, the Court looked to another important element of equal protection, which stated that unfair treatment couldn’t be based on immutable distinctions, such as race and gender, because those fixed distinctions are uncontrollable and unrelated to ability. In the case of Frontiero v. Richardson, 411 U.S. 677 (1973), the Supreme Court was just one vote short of adopting gender as a suspect classification. In United States v. Virginia, 518 U.S. 515 (1996), women rights supporters were very pleased with the Supreme Court’s ruling and remain

The Equal Rights Amendment began its earliest discussions in 1920. These discussions took place immediately after two-thirds of the states approved women's suffrage. The nineteenth century was intertwined with several feminist movements such as abortion, temperance, birth control and equality. Many lobbyists and political education groups formed in these times. One such organization is the Eagle Forum, who claims to lead the pro-family movement. On the opposite side of the coin is The National Organization for Women, or NOW, which takes action to better the position of women in society. Feminism is the most powerful force for change in our time. The Equal Rights Amendment has been a

The Equal Rights Amendment was created to give equal rights to both female and male because they weren’t getting treated equally. Women didn’t have the same rights as males, one of them was voting and during that time it was a really big problem in the U.S. Also, because there was so much sex discrimination like females weren’t getting the respect they should and they would treat them so bad, because women couldn’t vote, own

Equality and Civil Rights is complex in nature that the 14th Amendment (Equal Protection Clause) is the closest approach to a literal statement of equality, it declares: “No State shall deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.” The clause was originally intended to benefit newly freed slaves. Over time, it has acquired a broader meaning. Today, it forbids states and their local governments to draw unreasonable distinctions between classes of persons. The equal rights amendment (ERA) was introduced in 1923. Their policy was for protection of women and based largely on sexual stereotypes, which has been woven into the legal fabric of American life. This protectionism has limited the freedom of women to compete with men socially and economically on an equal footing. The movement to provide equal rights to women advanced a step with the passage of the Equal Pay Act of 1963. That act required equal pay for men and women doing similar work. On the other hand, to remove the restrictions of protectionism, women needed equal opportunity for employment. They got it in the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and later the legislation. The commitment that led to affirmative action programs expanded opportunities for women, minorities, and those who are disabled.

Those include family life, personal relationships, and professional choices thus resulting in why it may have not been ratified. Before reading this chapter as far as women's rights what I knew to be an issue and continues to be an issue in United States for a while is equal pay for women. Men being paid more than women has always been an issue it's made headlines in the news recently during the campaigning of a women president Hiliary Clinton. After reading this chapter, I discovered