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President Jimmy Carter signs the House of Representative resolution proposing the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA) before it was sent to the states for ratification in 1978. The Equal Rights Amendment was supported by those who believed that women did not have equal status to men in the United States and who hoped to force change. The ERA failed to gain ratification by the required number of states and therefore was not made into law.
The Equal Rights Amendment (ERA) is[note 1] a proposed amendment to the United States Constitution designed to guarantee equal legal rights for all American citizens regardless of sex. It seeks to end the legal distinctions between men and women in matters of divorce, property, employment, and other matters.[1] The first version of an ERA was written by Alice Paul and Crystal Eastman and introduced in Congress in December 1923.[2][3][4] In the early history of the Equal Rights Amendment, middle-class women were largely supportive, while those speaking for the working class were often opposed, pointing out that employed women needed special protections regarding working conditions and employment hours. With the rise of the women's movement in the United States during the 1960s, the ERA garnered increasing support, and, after being reintroduced by Representative Martha Griffiths in 1971, it was approved by the House of Representatives on October 12, 1971, and by the Senate on March 22, 1972, thus submitting the ERA to the state legislatures for ratification, as provided for in Article V of the Constitution. Congress had originally set a ratification deadline of March 22, 1979, for the state legislatures to consider the ERA. Through 1977, the amendment received 35 of the necessary 38 state ratifications.[note 2] With wide, bipartisan support (including that of both major political parties, both houses of Congress, and presidents Richard Nixon, Gerald Ford, and Jimmy Carter)[5] the ERA seemed destined for ratification until Phyllis Schlafly mobilized conservative women in opposition. These women argued that the ERA would disadvantage housewives, cause women to be drafted into the military and to lose protections such as alimony, and eliminate the tendency for mothers to obtain custody over their children in divorce cases.[6] Many labor feminists also opposed the ERA on the basis that it would eliminate protections for women in labor law,
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Location: The White House, Washington, DC
Photo credit: © American Photo Archive / Alamy / Afripics
License: Royalty Free
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Keywords: amendment, carter, constitution, constitutional, equal, era, house, jimmy, president, presidential, ratification, ratify, rights, sign, signature, signing, white, woman, women, womens