The Equal Rights Amendment: A promise unfulfilled

"Equality of rights under the law shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any state on account of sex." That's all the Equal Rights Amendment says. No mention even of women. Just 24 words. Fighting words written by Alice Paul, a driving force behind the passage, finally, in 1920 of the vote for women. 

Paul first submitted a version of the ERA to Congress in 1923. The fight to get it passed took nearly 50 years, until 1972. Getting it ratified by three-quarters of the states was supposed to be the easy part. "Why? Because it was based on justice and common sense and fairness," said 87-year-old feminist writer Letty Cottin Pogrebin. One of the founders of Ms. Magazine, Pogrebin is a titan of the women's movement. She said she believed, "by 1975, the country will wake up and we'll have equality."

Wrong! The opposition was ferocious. Its loudest voice: conservative activist Phyllis Schlafly, who said in 1983, "Women do have ambition and work hard, but most women choose to apply those energies to building their family."

Congress set a time limit for the ratification process, until 1982. But the yes votes stalled at 35, three short of the 38 states needed.

Even without the ERA, change has come. Exhibit A: Letty Cottin Pogrebin, at the beginning of her career in the early 1960s, compared to her granddaughter, Maya, and daughter, Robin. According to Pogrebin, sixty years ago, "There was a set of pink cards in every employment agency that were women's jobs, and blue cards that were men's jobs."

Robin Rogrebin, 61, has been a prominent New York Times journalist for more than 30 years. "It wasn't as if I grew up conscious of barriers," she said. "My generation had the luxury of my mother's generation breaking down the doors for us. So, we were not taking to the streets ourselves. I just didn't feel like we were putting all our chips on the ERA."

Twenty-seven-year-old Maya Klaris works in finance. "A lot of women I know, their ultimate goal is to be wives and mothers," she said.

Klaris does intend to have a career, a big one. But the Equal Rights Amendment? Not something that ever crossed her mind. "I never really considered the fact that I was a woman in the way I was living my life," she said. "When I was, you know, told about we were doing this, it was kind of like, do women not have equal rights under the law?"

That's right!

In 2020, Virginia became the 38th state to ratify the ERA. But the deadline was long past. So, a constitutional guarantee of equality for women is still nonexistent.

Meanwhile, battles thought to have been decided once and for all – over reproductive rights, equal pay, military service and more – are battles once again.

WEB EXCLUSIVE: Watch an extended conversation with Letty Cottin Pogrebin, Robin Pogrebin and Maya Klaris (Video)

    
For more info:

• Letty Cottin Pogrebin, Ms. Magazine co-founder
• Robin Pogrebin, New York Times culture reporter

    
Story produced by Marty Raffalli. Editor: Carol Ross.

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See also:

• 2023: Senate fails to advance Equal Rights Amendment
• The Equal Rights Amendment is stalled, will it ever become law?
• A tribute to monumental women ("Sunday Morning")
• How suffragists finally won the right to vote for women ("Sunday Morning")