Equal Rights Amendment remains as relevant as ever

The Equal Rights Amendment has existed in a state of limbo for most of my life.

Like many women in America, I’ve mistakenly, and to my own detriment, given it little thought. Perhaps this is true of you, too.

How would our lives be different now if the ERA had been ratified? Perhaps women wouldn’t have to wonder why they are not being paid as much as a man for doing the same job. Maybe law enforcement and society in general would take sexual assault more seriously. Maybe all women would have adequate access to prenatal maternity care, as well as to childcare after their babies are born.

The amendment, first passed by Congress in 1972, was never ratified. The idea for enshrining the equal rights of women in the Constitution was broached shortly after women gained the right to vote in 1919. After Congress proposed the ERA, 35 passed it by 1979, when the first deadline passed. The deadline to ratify was extended to 1982, but by then well-organized opposition, much of it framed around abortion, stalled progress.

Then, this month, Virginia, muscled forward by its newly elected female Democratic leadership, achieved a historic feat mid-January by becoming the 38th state to approve the amendment — which puts the state tally over the three-quarters threshold required to amend the Constitution.

This does not mean that women will be given equal protections soon. Reactionary forces have aligned against the amendment moving forward. Significant court battles loom.

The Justice Department, in January, issued its view that the entire process needs to be restarted through Congressional action. If this opinion is upheld in the courts, that means the ERA is back to square one.

Here is the original wording: “Equality of rights under the law shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any state on account of sex.”

It’s amazing to me now that anybody would take issue with that simple and fair formulation. But I remember the vitriol with which it was met when the amendment was debated.

I was a child then. But I recall the tenor of the times, being puzzled by the fact that some women were branded as “bra-burners” and how the word feminist was given a negative connotation.

The invective felt overdone, even to my young mind, blissfully unaware that there was such a thing as misogyny.

Fast forward to 2020, and antifeminist rhetoric persists, albeit often scrubbed of some of the offensiveness of yore. This despite undeniable progress by women during my lifetime.

Because so many battles over the gender barrier have been won, many women don’t realize what they are missing without constitutional protection against discrimination.

American women’s collective advancement was harder to achieve, came at a higher cost to our livelihoods and personal self-worth, simply because the U.S. Constitution does not recognize women as being equal to men.

If you don’t wish to believe that, heed the words of deceased Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia: “The Constitution does not protect women from sexual discrimination. No one ever thought that’s what it meant. No one ever voted for that.”

The courts need this bedrock foundation to find on behalf of women in a myriad of issues. The 14th amendment, with its clause of equal protection, too often doesn’t legally suffice.

It’s impossible to know how different America might have been now if the amendment had passed years ago.

The clock cannot be set backward. All that’s left is to look forward.

We can vow — men and women together — to see this long-denied amendment for equality through.