New push for ERA at state and federal levels
In Minnesota, activists have lobbied for an equal rights amendment that specifically protects abortion access
The Equal Rights Amendment was a rallying call for a generation of feminists. Its formation began with the suffrage movement in the 1920s, and it was again the focus of feminism during the second wave.
Now, in states like Minnesota, women, and their allies have pushed for adopting an ERA in state and federal constitutions. Currently, 27 states have some form of that amendment. Betty Folliard, founder of ERA Minnesota, spoke to me about their efforts in the state.
“This is not reinventing the wheel,” Folliard said. “This is not anything that's apocalyptic although the other side will frame thusly. This is actually something that is long overdue.”
She and others founded the organization in 2014. According to MPR News, legislators have tweaked the proposed amendment to spell out rights to pregnancy and pregnancy outcomes explicitly. That brought controversy.
This isn’t the first time that the wording of an equal rights amendment brought controversy. Let’s go through a brief but fascinating history for readers my age and younger. Some of my readers were primary movers in the debate. So, if you feel like adding an element to it or emailing me with a quote or clarification, I would be glad to adjust it on the website for this newsletter. I’d be particularly interested in hearing more about what happened in the 1970s, as the people who experienced it are still alive. Oral history always makes an account more informative and reliable.
The Equal Rights Amendment was an offshoot of the passage of the Nineteenth Amendment, which gave women the right to vote. The National Woman’s Party launched in 1921, according to The Hidden History of the Equal Rights Amendment, written by Hal Draper and Stephen Diamond.
The suffragists had pushed for it because sex discrimination happened after World War I. Women had worked in industries, but when the men returned, those in power sought to restore the status quo. Wisconsin was the first to establish an equal rights amendment. It was designed to protect the labor rights of women.
The feminist movement faded a bit in the 1930s but surged again during World War II when women began working in industry on a wide scale again. That was the era of Rosie the Riveter, a poster image promoting women’s involvement in the war effort. It was first supported by the Republican party in 1940. Democrats followed suit four years later, according to Draper and Diamond’s book.
At the time, there was a split between what was known as the “pure” ERA and the workingwoman’s ERA. Purists wanted a blanket statement of gender equality, whereas the workingwomen’s contingent wanted other social protections. The dispute was over how specific the amendment should be.
Richard Nixon supported the Pure ERA from the beginning of his career, as did other Republicans. Liberal Democrats, by the 1950s, had disavowed it in favor of more specific protections. It nearly passed during that time, but the effort failed because of the opposition to concessions to working women.
In October 1970, Sen. Birch Bayh sought to pass an amendment rooted in the Fourteenth Amendment's language, which calls for equal protection of the law. He wanted to use that with an outright declaration against sex discrimination. He pushed for a flexible amendment that could be interpreted by the Supreme Court to account for different forms of experiences women had.
The ERA took on various forms and was ready to pass. But Phyllis Schlafly, an antiabortion and conservative firebrand, led the opposition against it. According to a history documented by Georgetown University, Schlafly's organization, The Eagle Forum, claimed that the ERA would harm women by reducing their rights to freedom from the draft, financial support from husbands, and the benefit of protective labor laws. She argued that women were not the victims of discrimination. In her view, they enjoyed privileges that men lacked, which were endangered by the ERA. For her, the equality envisioned by the Equal Rights Amendment was not desirable--the status quo was.
With the overturning of Roe v. Wade, the women’s movement received a jolt in interest and a groundswell of grassroots activism. Things like universal 24-hour daycare have been discussed again in this newsletter. The passage of something 100 years in the making should remain a goal that Gen Z and millennials carry on.
In Minnesota, they are trying to address pay inequity, pregnancy discrimination, and sexual violence. They are basing it on a report the state’s Attorney General Keith Ellison released in March 2022 to expand women's economic security.
Folliard thinks recent history is the impetus behind the resurgent push for an amendment there and on the national scale.
“People ask me all the time, ‘Why do we need it?’” Folliard said. “And I think the Dobbs decision made it clear why we need to constitutionalize rights, to put it in our strongest legal document in the state, to ensure that future legislatures and courts do not remove our rights.”