Pros And Cons Of The Equal Rights Amendment

The full text of the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA) reads as follows, “Equality of rights under the law shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of sex” (qtd. in Stewart 33). These twenty-four words would become some of the most controversial of the twentieth century. Under the nineteenth amendment, American women obtained the right to vote in 1920. This amendment inspired Alice Paul to draft the first ERA which she then introduced to the United States Congress in 1923. After this first proposal, the ERA would eventually be proposed in each succeeding session of Congress (Stewart 33). Despite its introduction every year for fifty years, the ERA did not accumulate a strong opposing force until after it

Congress gave the amendment seven years for ratification when it was submitted in 1972. Many states ratified the amendment quickly, other states refused the ratification.

Possibly the most conversational amendment to every make it’s way through the Senate and the House was the Equal Rights Amendment in 1972. The Equal Rights Amendment was, “introduced through the twenties, thirties, forties, fifties, and sixties without success” (Schneir, 369). Various organizations such as the National Woman’s Party (those who proposed it), National Organization for Women, the Women’s Department of the United Auto Workers, and many other feminists worked most if not all of their lives to pass this specific amendment. In the early 1970’s, the House approved the amendment by a large ratio of 354 to 23. Additionally, in 1972, the Senate also passed the amendment by another shocking ratio of 84 to 8. Unfortunately, the amendment did not pass by its deadline of June 30th, 1982 by only thirty-five states approving it for ratification by at least thirty-eight states (Schneir, 370). There were various reasons why the amendment did not pass, and Miriam Schneir discussed several of these in the section Equal Rights Amendment in the book Feminism in Our Time.

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.

The Amendment was passed August 26, 1920. Their fight to vote started sometime in the 1820s. In the 1820s american women were titled to be a perfect housewife which included cooking for the men and children, cleaning, looking after children, and should be submissive towards the other gender. They were not allowed to have paying jobs because men thought women could not handle that things except for taking care of their family. In 1851 Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton work together to fight for women’s rights. A lot of people were against what they were trying to accomplish and still are. They worked together in making a newspaper to promote the idea of women’s rights. Around 1869 the National Women’s Suffrage Association was formed

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

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.

On September 25, 1789, Congress transmitted to the state Legislatures twelve proposed amendments to the Constitution. Numbers three through twelve were adopted by the states to become the United States (U.S.) Bill of Rights, effective December 15, 1791.

The Bill of Rights is the first ten amendments of the United States constitution and they are basically a list of restrictions of government powers, not all government powers of course, but certain liberties that the authors deemed necessary to restrict the government from having full control over. These amendments cause a lot of controversy between the citizens that they are to protect because they are interpreted differently by different mindsets and are left a bit open to interpretation that causes confusion and dare I say chaos at times. Lastly, it seems that the Bill of Rights is the only section the mass majority of citizens talk about when they are arguing about the constitution or anything that has to deal with liberties.

When the original Articles of Confederation was drafted in 1777, a bill of rights was considered unnecessary. The U.S government was not considered a single national government, but an alliance of independent states. Since the national government has no power to restrict people’s rights, there was no need for laws to prevent it from doing so. During the Constitutional Convention of 1787 the Constitution was passed without a bill of rights. When the constitution was sent to the states for ratification, a debate broke out between the Federalists, who supported a strong national government, and the Anti-Federalists, who supported retaining the spirit of the Articles of Confederation . Although the constitution was passed without a bill of rights, some Anti-Federalists felt that that it would be worthwhile to specifically protect through constitutional amendments such individual rights as free speech, religious exercise, and jury trials. Thomas Jefferson who sided with Anti-Federalists on this matter, sent a letter in 1789 to James Madison to pass the bill of rights . Madison submitted a draft of his proposed bill of rights several months later, and Congress passed it modified version by the end of the year. After ratification by the states, the Final Bill of Rights consisted of ten amendments that covered a wide range of topics, guaranteeing citizens individual rights such as freedom of speech and religious liberty and protecting them from excessive bail, unwarranted searches,

The Feminist Movement in the United States carried over to the 1970s, and took a prominent role within society. The fiftieth anniversary of the passage of the Nineteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution (which legalized female suffrage) in 1970 was commemorated by the Women 's Strike for Equality and other protests. Women everywhere wanted equal pay. The Equal Rights Amendment (ERA) was a proposed amendment that would guarantee equality under the law for women. It was introduced in 1923. During the 1970s, the ERA was passed by Congress and sent to the states for ratification, but fell three states short

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; 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 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.