There seemed to be danger in equality for the ideological/cultural concept of the father as head and provider, mother as nurturer and manager, and children as replicas into the next generation. Equation of ERA with sexual permissiveness, abortion, child care, homosexuality, and unisexuality drew the debate away from the constitutional principle of equality to issues of “traditional family values.” But the attack did reflect the fears of many about the changing roles of women and men and about the changing form of the family. The attack against ERA seemed, at times, alarmist and hysterical.
However, opponents-who ranged from the John Birch Society and Phyllis Shafley’s STOP ERA, to conservatives throughout the political spectrum of Protestant-Catholic-Mormon-Jews-combined successfully to defeat the amendment. National polls consistently showed the majority of Americans in favor of the amendment. Despite an extension of time until 10 June 1982, proponents of ERA could not achieve the necessary thirty-eight state ratifications. By 1977 only thirteen additional states had ratified and five states had voted to rescind. Most of these were states which had already resolved in favor of women’s rights by enacting equal protective labor legislation for men and women.īut with revolutions come counterrevolutions. Indeed, twenty-two states ratified it that first year. By then the Legacy of the 1960s revolution in civil rights seemed to assure the amendment’s passage. However, it was not until 1972 that a version of ERA was passed by the Senate and sent on to the states for ratification. But Paul was determined that women should be treated as individuals under the law just as men were, not as a class subject to mass governmental regulation. The ERA would have eliminated protective legislation which for years reformers had sought for female industrial workers. It was promoted by Alice Paul and National Women’s party, but opposed by many of their colleagues who had worked to pass the Nineteenth Amendment (women’s suffrage) in 1920. The Equal Rights Amendment to the Constitution was first proposed in the United States Congress in December 1923.
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