Equal Rights Amendment Failure

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 was reintroduced in Congress in July of 1982 and has been before every session of Congress since then, and there still has not been a majority ratification to add this Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.

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.

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

Once it was sent to the states for ratification in March 1972 it had seven years to become ratified by three-fourths of the states. By 1973 the ERA had become ratified by 30 of the required 38 states. The ERA only was ratified in five more states before the 1979 deadline was reached, then Congress extended the deadline to 1982. The supporters organized boycotts and demonstrations in numerous states that hadn’t ratified the amendment yet in hopes of gaining support. However, after the extension of the deadline, some of the states, due to growing opposition, wished to rescind their ratification of the amendment and no more ratified it. Despite public opinion polls showed the majority in favor of the ERA, the amendment fell short of being ratified by three states.

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

Nearly a century after the initial introduction of the amendment, controversy still remains. Adversaries of the amendment have claimed that the law is redundant, would lower the status of women and would tear apart the family unit, while advocates asserted that the Equal Rights Amendment would secure equality for men and women and would bring the United States of America closer to achieving parity between the sexes. The Equal Rights Amendment, while not perfect, should have been ratified and added to the United States Constitution because it would have ensured a status of legal equality between men and women that the 14th amendment of the United States Constitution does not adequately provide.

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 Rights Amendment was formed to combat legal sex discrimination. The act seeks to end discrimination between women and men in terms of property, divorce, and employment rates along with many other matters. Many supporters of the ERA marched, rallied, and committed acts of civil disobedience just to show awareness, but little did many know they were part taking in a historical continuum in the fight for equality (Francis, Roberta W.).

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

The Equal Rights Amendment; first proposed by the National Women's Party in congress in 1923, was sent to the states in March 1972 and was the second amendment to fail at being ratified. Originally the deadline to pass or fail the amendment was 7 years, but that was extended to ten years. The final deadline was on June 30, 1982. It was meant to equalize men and women’s rights and it goes as follows: “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.” One other amendment like the Equal Rights Amendment was the "Lucretia Mott Amendment” proposed by Alice Paul in 1923 at the Seneca Falls Women’s Rights Convention which read: "Men and women shall have equal rights throughout the United States and every place subject to its jurisdiction” and the "Alice Paul Amendment" written by Alice Paul in 1943. The amendment was eventually passed but in the form of the 19th amendment.

After the Women’s Suffrage Movement, Alice Paul introduces the Equal Rights Amendment in 1923 to Congress, but is pushed aside as it was not seen as great importance at the time, hence why it was not urgent for it to be reviewed and passed for an awaited ratification. A new movement rolls in to improve the conditions women faced in the late 1900s, also known as the second-wave feminist movement. Martha Griffiths, a woman who served on the House Committee on Ways and Means, reintroduces the Equal Rights Amendment, after revising it, in the 92nd Congress. The amendment was given seven years to be ratified by thirty eight states and unfortunately, only twenty two had ratified it in their states, resulting in the amendment not being passed.

After women got the right to vote in 1920, the most devoted members of the women's movement focused on gaining other rights for women. Alice Paul and Lucy Burns, who had created the National Women's Party in 1916 to work for women's suffrage, turned their efforts toward passing the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA). This amendment, which would make all forms of discrimination based on sex illegal, did not receive significant support and never passed. Arguments against the ERA, advocated by social reformers, such as Florence Kelley and Jane Addams, along with administrators in the Women's Bureau of the Department of Labor, were that the ERA would, in reality, eliminate protective legislation for women, harming working-class women instead of helping them.