The Fight for Equal Rights, 1923-1972

The ERA, in varying forms, was introduced in every session ofCongress from 1923 until 1971, but it was routinely bottled up incommittees and never even received a floor vote until after WorldWar II.

In the early 1950s, the division among feminists became apparentwhen the \"Hayden rider\" was attached to the ERA. This provisionwould have preserved the protective labor legislationdeemed so important by many labor unions, and many working-classwomen, at the time. Such legislation included laws that mandated aminimum wage, or prohibited long hours or night shifts, for womenworkers.

Because these laws assumed that women were \"different\" frommen—in the sense of being \"weaker\" or more in need of specialprotection—they were vehemently opposed by the National Women'sParty. As long as the ERA included the Hayden rider, Paul and theNWP opposed its passage.

The Republican Party was the first to embrace the ERA. The GOPnational platform first included a plank in support of the ERA in1940, and President Dwight Eisenhower publicly called for theamendment's passage in 1958. But the combination of firm oppositionfrom organized labor, and feminist opposition to the Hayden rider,continued to block the amendment's passage. (Frum, 2000)

Democrats, with closer ties to organized labor, were slower toembrace the ERA. Although John F. Kennedy endorsed the amendmentlate in the 1960 campaign, he did not push for its passage afterwinning the White House.

Kennedy did take a number of steps favored by women's rightsactivists: he appointed a blue-ribbon national Commission on theStatus of Women, which lobbied successfully for passage of theEqual Pay Act of 1963, which banned sex discrimination in pay formany professions. He also issued an executive order banning genderdiscrimination in the civil service. But most of his womenappointees, including Commission chair and feminist icon EleanorRoosevelt, had ties to the labor movement and opposed the ERA.(Wolbrecht, 2000)

The amendment's prospects improved considerably in themid-1960s, as women's rights activists began to make common causewith civil rights activists, and the rise of a new and moreactivist \"women's liberation movement\" focused on a wider range ofissues of concern to women.

In 1964, Congress banned workplace discrimination based ongender (as well as race, religion and national origin), in theCivil Rights Act; the inclusion of women in the Act reflected,among other factors, the concerted lobbying of Coretta Scott King,wife of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., and the NWP's Alice Paul.While the women's rights movement and the civil rights movement didnot always see eye-to-eye—and tensions between the two would becomeevident in the late 1960s—their cooperation during the debate overthe Civil Rights Act was a critical moment for both.

In 1966 feminist author Betty Friedan—whose 1963 book, TheFeminine Mystique, had given voice to the frustrations ofmillions of American women—helped found the National Organizationfor Women (NOW) and co-wrote the organization's Statement ofPurpose. NOW, she wrote, would lead \"a new movement toward trueequality for all women in America, and toward a fully equalpartnership of the sexes,\" and would \" confront, with concreteaction, the conditions that now prevent women from enjoying theequality of opportunity and freedom of which is their right.\"

NOW, which would formally endorse the ERA in 1967, became thedriving force in the second wave* of American feminism (discussedon the next page). Along with several other feminist organizations,NOW focused on \"consciousness raising\"—using highly publicized (andsometimes confrontational) events to increase public awareness ofgender inequality—coupled with old-fashioned, hard-nosed lobbyingto advance its legislative agenda.

In early 1970 NOW disrupted a Senate hearing on a proposedConstitutional amendment to lower the voting age to 18, anddemanded a hearing on the ERA. The following August, on the 50thanniversary of the ratification of the Nineteenth Amendment, itorganized the Women's Strike for Equality, a protest of more than20,000 women that highlighted the need for social, political, andeconomic equality. (Gourley, 2008)

Coming at a time of profound social and political change inAmerica—a convergence of the civil rights movement, protestsagainst the war in Vietnam, the rise of the counterculture*, andthe so-called \"sexual revolution\"—the demand for equal rights forwomen suddenly seemed less radical than it had, only a few yearsearlier. (Frum, 2000) Organized labor, for the most part, droppedits opposition, and political leaders of both parties, includingPresident Richard M. Nixon, publicly embraced the ERA.

In 1970 Representative Martha Griffiths of Michigan spearheadeda movement to \"discharge\" the ERA from the House JudiciaryCommittee, where it had languished for years. Once given theopportunity to vote on the ERA the full House of Representativesapproved it overwhelmingly in 1971. The Senate followed suit in1972 and before the year was out, 22 states had approved it—morethan half the total of 38 states needed for formal ratification.The ERA, it seemed, would soon be enshrined in theConstitution.

Question: Based on your reading in the webtext, respond to thefollowing prompt in one to two paragraphs. In one or two sentences,summarize the author’s thesis statement about the Equal RightsAmendment (ERA). To support your answer, copy and paste one or twosentences from the article that convey the author’s central point.Also answer the following question in your post: How does thisarticle excerpt give you a better understanding of the politicaldifficulties that faced ERA proponents in the mid- and late1970s?