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37 Harv. J.L. & Gender 569 (2014)
Toward a Renewed Equal Rights Amendment: Now More than Ever

handle is hein.journals/hwlj37 and id is 585 raw text is: TOWARD A RENEWED EQUAL RIGHTS AMENDMENT: NOW MORE THAN EVERI CATHARINE A. MACKINNON The sexes are human equals. Yet women, on the whole, are not men's legal equals2 or, by most any standard, men's social equals.' The laws that guarantee against discrimination-mainly the Fourteenth Amendment Equal Protection Clause4 and Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 19645-have, I argue, gone about as far as they will or can to produce equality of the sexes in life. An Equal Rights Amendment (ERA) is urgently needed, now as much as or more than ever. The provisions we have can, of course, still be used, including more creatively, in litigation and as the basis for legislation. But the way sex equality has been approached under U.S. law has, I think, essentially run its course. Most of the issues that were the focus of the last ERA debate in the 1960s and 1970s have been largely addressed, in some cases solved, under the Fourteenth Amendment, by executive or legislative action, or through social change.6 Two major issues that were not central to the prior ERA discussion remain basic in women's second-class status: economic inequality and violence against women. Both the 1972 ERA language, prohibiting dis- crimination on account of sex,' and Carolyn Maloney's bill's proposed ' @ Catharine A. MacKinnon, 2013, 2014. This brief introduction was delivered as opening remarks on September 28, 2013 to the New ERA Brainstorming Session at Harvard Law School's conference Celebrating 60 Years of Alumnae, together with Jessica Neuwirth, Chair of the ERA Coalition, and Congresswoman Elizabeth Holtzman, who was instrumental in the most recent previous ERA effort, particularly the time extension. Some of my prior thoughts on this question can be found in CATHARINE A. MACKINNON, Not by Law Alone: From a Debate with Phyllis Schlafly (1982), in FEMINISM UNMODIFIED: DISCOURSES ON LIFE AND LAW 21 (1987), and CATHARINE A. MAcKINNON, Unthinking ERA Thinking, in WOMEN'S LIVES, MEN'S LAWS 13 (2005). Lisa Cardyn is warmly thanked for her superb assistance on the footnotes. 2 See generally Catharine A. MacKinnon, Reflections on Sex Equality Under Law, 100 YALE L.J. 1281 (1991). 3 See, e.g., U.N. DEV. PROG., HUMAN DEVELOPMENT 2013: THE RISE OF THE SOUTH: HUMAN PROGRESS IN A DIVERSE WORLD 156-59, tbl.4 (2013); U.N. DEPT OF EcON. & Soc. AFFAIRS, THE WORLD'S WOMEN 2010: TRENDS AND STATISTICS, U.N. Doc. ST/ESA/ STAT/SER.K/19, U.N. Sales No. E.10.XVII.11 (2010). 4 U.S. CONST. amend. XIV, § 1. Civil Rights Act of 1964, 42 U.S.C. §§ 2000e-2000e-17 (2006). 6 Prominent examples are the combat exclusion, see, e.g., Press Release, U.S. Dep't of Def., Defense Department Rescinds Direct Combat Exclusion Rule; Service to Expand Integration of Women into Previously Restricted Occupations and Units (Jan. 24, 2013), archived at http://perma.cc/lW3Z-Z5EV, and gay and lesbian rights, see, e.g., United States v. Windsor, 133 S. Ct. 2675 (2013); Hollingsworth v. Perry, 133 S. Ct. 2652 (2013). 'Equal Rights Amendment, H.R.J. Res. 208, 92d Cong. § 1 (1972) (Equality of rights under the law shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of sex.).

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