Why is the equal rights amendment important
Why We Need An Equal Rights Amendment
eighty percent of Americans believe men
and women are guaranteed equal rights in
the US Constitution you might be
surprised to learn this isn't the case
to understand why we need to look at the
history of a nearly hundred year old
piece of legislation called the Equal
Rights Amendment or the er a the Equal
Rights Amendment was written in 1921 by
a leading group of women's rights
advocates they believed systemic
discrimination based on gender would
continue unless we adopted a
constitutional amendment to explicitly
give women the same rights as men in all
areas of life and not just at the voting
booth some version of the e ra was
introduced to Congress every year from
1923 to 1971 but it failed to pass every
time the big break took almost 50 years
as a new generation of activists wrote
the momentum of the civil rights and
women's movement of the 1960s the Equal
Rights Amendment was finally approved by
both the House and the Senate in 1972
but there was one last hurdle for an
amendment to be added to the US
Constitution it must be ratified by
three-fourths of the states thus 38 out
of 50 states only 35 states ratified the
amendment in the 1970s before an
opposition campaign brought the progress
to a halt by the 1980s most people
assumed the amendment was dead and that
brings us to today a new generation of
activists has taken up the cause and
riding the momentum of the me2 and times
up movements to more states have
ratified the ER a bringing it just one
state shy of reaching 38 State threshold
it's important to understand why we need
the Equal Rights Amendment in the first
place while it's true that gender
discrimination is illegal in major areas
of life such as employment and housing
without a solid constitutional basis for
it laws and norms could change and leave
women unprotected as a result to quote
Antonin Scalia certainly the
Constitution does not require
discrimination on the basis of sex the
only issue is whether it prohibits it
it doesn't many states have already
included some version of the e ra in
their state constitutions and support
for the amendment is overwhelmingly
bipartisan with over ninety percent of
Democrats Republicans and independents
supporting it so what can you do the
biggest challenge here is false
perception
most Americans believe that men and
women are already guaranteed equal
rights so they don't think that the
Equal Rights Amendment is needed the
easiest thing you can do is help to
break that perception within your circle
of friends and family the second thing
you can do especially if you live in any
of the states that haven't ratified the
amendment is to contact your local
representative and ask them to support
this overwhelmingly bipartisan piece of
legislation beyond the symbolic victory
the Equal Rights Amendment can serve as
a legal basis for protecting women in
all areas of life we're long overdue but
we can and must do the right thing
moving forward peace
