Why the Equal Rights Ammendment Was Defeated Essay

The Equal rights Amendment was proposed to set equality for every citizen no matter the sex. The amendment has three sections. The first one states “equality of rights under the law should not be denied by the U.S on the account of one's sex.” Section two says that “congress has the power to enforce this law.” Last but not least, section three says the amendment will take effect two years after ratification.

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.

Women were not allowed to vote nor were they paid as much as men for completing the same job. In a 1889 payroll from Lyman Mills in Holyoke, MA we see that a man and a woman performing the same work for the same duration of time, could have a three dollar difference in their weekly wages. Three dollars may not seem like much but it is equivalent to $74.36 in today’s money! Suffragist Susan B. Anthony once said that the preamble of the Constitution says “’We the people of the United States…’ It was the people; not we the white male citizens; nor we, the male citizens; but we the whole people, who formed the union.” Women gained their right to vote in 1920 when the nineteenth amendment was passed.

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.

Women’s rights and equalities have always been an issue. Women first began their fight for equality in 1776, when the Congress was working on the Declaration of Independence. During the late 1840s, women set up the first women’s rights convention, which was the starting point of the women’s rights movement. In 1861, men were getting called off to war, leaving their wives and kids at home to wait patiently and care for the house and children. Women did not take too well to that idea, and they began to take action. Women have always fought for their right to stand alongside men. The three major events for the fight to gain rights and equality for women were the “Remembering the Ladies” declaration, the Civil War, and the Women’s Rights Movement.

The 15th Amendment to the Constitution granted African American men the right to vote by declaring that the "right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any state on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude."(The library of congress).The 15th amendment touched upon topics such as race and color but it had not touched on gender equality. It denied women certain rights, such as the right to vote. The constitution did not secure women’s rights to vote! How truly unfair this was! The constitution clarified that males had more power over women. Men were allowed to vote, and had many advantages over women. This made many women outraged. The accentuation on voting during the 1860s drove ladies' rights activists to concentrate on lady suffrage. The two sides built up two opponent national associations that intended to win ladies the vote.

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

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.

still lag behind men, we need an Equal Rights Amendment more than ever (Hennessey 3). The real issue, claim some supporters, is the "right to bodily integrity, and without this basic right, women can have no true freedom" (NOW 2). Legal sex discrimination is not a thing of the past, and the progress of the last forty years is not irreversible without the protection of an amendment (Francis 1).Feminist claim that "The ERA's most valuable effect would be the psychological victory it would provide women" (Steiner 35). Women are underpaid in the workforce, required to pay higher insurance premiums and are half as likely as men to get pensions (NOW 4). Supporter of the Equal Rights Amendment remind us of a traditional assumption, ‘Men hold rights and women must prove that they hold them" (Francis 2). Supporter claim amazement that, "Even in the twenty first century, the United States Constitution does not explicitly guarantee that all the rights it protects are held equally by all citizens" (Francis 4). Supporters of the Equal Rights Amendment believe that "unless we put into the Constitution the bedrock principle that equality of rights cannot be denied or abridged on account of sex, the political and judicial victories women have achieved with their blood, sweat and tears for the past two

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 quest for equal rights is usually put into two different waves: the first wave being considered women’s suffrage and the second being the equal right movement. One big uprising in feminism happened alongside the abolitionist movement. Many women started to realize that, as they were fighting to get African Americans out of their version of perdition at the hands of their slave owners, that they themselves were slaves to the will of the men in society. Since many women petitioned for antislavery, the Congress in session at the time put forth the gag rule, which placed many of these petitions off to the side for “consideration.”

The struggle for equal rights has been an ongoing issue in the United States. For most of the twentieth century Americans worked toward equality. Through demonstrations, protests, riots, and parades citizens have made demands and voiced their concerns for equal rights. For the first time minority groups were banding together to achieve the American dream of liberty and justice for all. Whether it was equality for women, politics, minorities, or the economy the battle was usually well worth the outcome. I have chosen articles that discuss some of the struggles, voyages, and triumphs that have occurred. The people discussed in the following articles represent only a portion of those who suffered.

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.

The Equal Rights Amendment was first proposed in 1923 by The National Women's Party, but it was originally written in 1921 by suffragist, Alice Paul. It first stated that, "Men and women shall have equal rights throughout the United States and every place subject to its jurisdiction." Alice Paul first intorduced the amendment as the "Lucretia Mott Amendment." The ERA's biggest success waa being passed by both houses of Congress in 1972, but quickly fell short when it received only 22 of the 38 needed state ratifications. As time passed, the passing of the ERA was slowed with only 8 ratfications in 1973, 3 in 1974, 1 in 1975, and none in 1976. In 1977, Indiana became the 35th, and the last, state to ratify the ERA. In this year, Alice Paul