Equal Rights Amendment

noun

1. ERA.

Equal Rights Amendment

1. A twice-proposed but never ratified amendment to the Constitution that would prohibit denial or abridgement of rights on the basis of sex. First proposed in 1923, the amendment was passed by Congress in 1972 but failed ratification by the requisite number of states. It was a major rallying point of the women's movement.

Example Sentences

The author reprises a star character from “These Truths,” the charismatic anti-feminist Phyllis Schlafly, who led the charge against the Equal Rights Amendment in the 1970s and ’80s: “On television, she was unbeatable. She was smart and relentlessly strategic. In her newsletter, and to conservative audiences, she denounced her opponents with precision and delight. To television audiences, she sold happiness and contentment like so much laundry detergent.”

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Just as politics in Washington moved left, the stirrings of a countermovement began: politicized Christian fundamentalism, the founding of right-wing think tanks, Phyllis Schlafly’s jihad against the Equal Rights Amendment, a property tax revolt in California and sputtering fury that gasoline would not remain at 30 cents a gallon for all eternity.

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From anti-suffragists to opponents of the Equal Rights Amendment, right-wing women have long made names and even lucrative careers for themselves opposing women’s rights.

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In an anecdote that feels especially meaningful given the current tensions over editorials, Gloria Steinem remembers being asked to address an editorial board meeting because Graham wanted them “to support the Equal Rights Amendment editorially and they were not doing so. She felt she couldn’t order them to, so she asked me to come …”

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Mark Joseph Stern: I think anything Joe Biden did on the Equal Rights Amendment was going to be symbolic.

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