![]() ![]() Congress passed the amendment easily, but it faced a tough fight in state legislatures. These feminists generally believed that legal protections for women were either toothless or counterproductive, limiting the roles women could play in the public world. When the ERA finally came close to passage in the 1970s, it was thanks to the work of the National Organization for Women (NOW) and other women’s rights groups. In the 1970s, Congress passed the amendment easily, but it faced a tough fight in state legislatures. Unwilling to enshrine protectionist language in the Constitution, equal rights advocates opposed the revised amendment, which ended up failing. When the ERA gained popularity after World War II, this alliance promoted the addition of language promising that the amendment “shall not be construed to impair any rights, benefits, or exemptions conferred by law upon persons of the female sex.” “Advocates of complete equality felt that female protectionism created an uneven and destructive gender relationship.”įor more than fifty years, opposition to the ERA united traditionalists who wanted women to focus on the domestic sphere with activists who believed women’s particular physical needs, and particularly their childbearing role, entitled them to specific protections. To Paul and her followers, any legal distinction between the sexes reinforced women’s status as second-class citizens. “Categorizing women as in need of special safeguards defined them as separate and inherently inferior,” Kyvig writes. Leading this side was suffragist Alice Paul, who proposed the Equal Rights Amendment, which was first introduced in Congress in 1923. ![]() On the other side was a much smaller contingent that demanded legal equality for women. ![]()
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