Advocates plan birthday gift for the 19th Amendment

It was a huge step forward for American women when, exactly 100 years ago, they finally gained the guaranteed right to vote with ratification of the 19th Amendment. But to Alice Paul, the step wasn’t nearly large enough.

Paul, a suffragist who’d waged hunger strikes and endured forced feedings in jail so women could get the vote, equipped herself with a law degree and got to work writing another constitutional amendment — one that would guarantee women equal rights under the law. She introduced that amendment — now known as the Equal Rights Amendment — in Congress in 1923.

Of course, the ERA, finally passed by Congress in 1972 only to stumble during a circuitous ratification effort, still isn’t law. But feminist leaders are determined to change that now. And they feel cultural momentum is on their side for another victory nearly a century in the making.

“To call them suffragists, it sounds like they only wanted one thing,” says Eleanor Smeal, president of the Feminist Majority, of Paul and her colleagues. “The vote was an important step, but they didn’t believe the vote alone would give women full equality.”

“Basically, we want to finish this,” she says. “The women’s movement is not giving up until this thing is in the Constitution, period.”

It was a joyful moment for Smeal when, in January, the Virginia state Legislature approved the amendment — becoming the crucial 38th state to cross the three-quarters threshold for ratification.