From 19th Amendment to ERA: Constitutional Amendments for Women's Equality
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November 14,2019
ARTICLE 2
From 19th Amendment to ERA
Constitutional Amendments for Women's Equality
Tracy A. Thomas
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The Nineteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution guaranteeing women's right to vote was
passed by Congress one hundred years ago on June 4,1919. N! irv[JD1] states quicldy ratified
the amendment, though it would be a close call when the final state, Tennessee, pushed the
amendment into law in August 2020. When first proposed, the vote or suffrage was just one
of many civil and social rights demanded by women. But it became the primary focus of the
women's rights movement in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, fueled by
political allegiances with conservative temperance women and supported by focus on the
vote as the primary right of citizenship as embodied in the new Fourteenth and Fifteenth
Amendments.
One year after the passage of the Nineteenth Amendment, women's rights leaders resurrected
the demands for gender equality in aspects of society by proposing the first Equal Rights
Amendment (ERA) in 1921. The ERA would have guaranteed that civil and legal rights cannot
be denied on the basis of sex From the beginning, however, the ERA was met with
opposition including from women themselves, with conservative women concerned about
impact on the family and progressive women concerned about impact on labor and union
rights. It would take another fifty years before both national political parties would endorse
the ERA, and Congress passed the ERA in 1972 guaranteeing that Equality of rights under the
law shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any state on account of sex:' The
necessary two-thirds of the states, however, failed to ratify the ERA, even after an extension of
the deadline.
A modern movement has renewed efforts to pass the ERA, still believing in the necessity of a
constitutional guarantee of the broad legal and social equality of women first advanced 171
years ago. This essay traces the history of the women's constitutional demands for equality,](ViewImageLocal?handle=hein.journals/insilaso20&div=5&collection=&method=preview&ext=.png&size=3)
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From 19th Amendment to ERA: Constitutional Amendments for Women's Equality
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