Advocates plan birthday gift for 19th Amendment: The ERA

It was a huge step forward for American women when, 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 had 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. 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 said. “The women’s movement is not giving up until this thing is in the Constitution, period.”

It was a joyful moment for Smeal and others when, in January, the Virginia state Legislature, under newly Democratic control, approved the amendment, becoming the crucial 38th state to cross the threequarters threshold for ratification. But the move hardly resolved the issue, which will likely be decided in the courts over thorny procedural questions. former headquarters of the National Woman’s Party, which Paul co-founded, “One of our people ran back and found her at Susan B. Anthony’s desk, and she was very, very upset,” Smeal says. Paul felt the imposed time limit was a delaying trick by opponents from southern states. “She felt it was going to be very, very hard to pass,” Smeal says.

Paul was right. Soon, some 30 states had ratified the ERA, but the ‘70s saw opposition form, led chiefly by conservative activist Phyllis Schlafly, who argued that women would lose gender-specific legal protections.

The deadline was later extended to 1982, but the needed final three states proved elusive. Momentum faded.

More recently, though, the current shifted again, as the #MeToo movement took hold and women’s advocates, buoyed by Democratic victories in statehouses, particularly of female candidates, brought the ERA back to the front burner. Virginia became the 38th state after Nevada in 2017 and Illinois in 2018.

In February, the U.S. House voted overwhelmingly to remove the ratification deadline. But in the Republican-controlled Senate, McConnell is seen as unlikely to bring it to the floor. And legal wrangling continues.

What would Paul think if she knew that in 2020, women would still be agitating for the amendment that was once named for her?

“Unfortunately, I don’t think she would be surprised,” says Smeal. “She knew how hard this was.”

But Smeal remains optimistic, buoyed by what she feels is a cultural shift. “Change is coming,” she said.