Equal Rights Amendment

The Equal Rights Amendment, 1972-1872
Alice Paul and the National Woman's Party first introduced the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA) to Congress in 1923. From its inception, the amendment had been meant to end "special privileges" that women were afforded by the law and to build equality between the sexes. In the 1950s, support for the amendment would grow with Presidents such as Eisenhower within their ranks. In 1963, President Kennedy's Commission on the Status of Women would state that an amendment was not needed for women to achieve equal rights. In 1970 the amendment would be revitalized by the Pittsburgh chapter of the National Organization of Women (NOW). They demanded that a hearing for the amendment and the subcommittee chair Birch Bayh, Democrat representative from Indiana, promised it would be heard that spring. In the months following that announcement, Representative Martha Griffiths, Democrat from Michigan, managed to obtain enough signatures for the amendment to be brought out of the House Judiciary Committee. The issue of whether there should be an addendum added that would exclude women from the draft had been an issue from the beginning and proponents of the ERA fought to have the House and Senate accept the ERA without any amendments. This fight to exclude new amendments was to keep the ERA from entering another House Committee where it might be killed before it had a chance to be ratified. Proponents of the amendment did accept an initial seven-year time limit, later extended by three years, and a delayed enforcement if ratification succeeded in order to solve objections before its passage.
In 1972, the ERA was sent to be considered by the states for ratification. The amendment sent to them differed from it...

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...r of states that have kept some form of the amendment. Modern proponents of the amendment believe that if they were able to get three of the fifteen states that did not ratify to ratify, the amendment "could withstand legal challenge and put the ERA into the Constitution". In January 2013, a petition was created to encourage the White House to respond and support the ERA and this three-state ratification plan. The White House replied with the President's support for the amendment and desire to create equal job opportunities and pay for women. The deadline put on the ERA was self-imposed and should three more states ratify the amendment, there is a chance that it would become a federal amendment. The changes it would bring in modern times are trickier to assess and would be largely left up to the interpretation of the courts given the open language of the amendment.