Center for American Progress
The Equal Rights Amendment: What You Need to Know
By Robin Bleiweis

This week, Virginia became the crucial 38th state to ratify the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA). This comes almost one hundred years after women gained suffrage—and with a growing number of women in the workforce, holding elected office, and running for president.

However, pending legal challenges mean that the amendment's future is uncertain. One thing that is certain? The time for a constitutional amendment explicitly guaranteeing equal rights regardless of sex is long overdue <[link removed]>.

When the ERA was first written, women's status in American society was often considered secondary to men's. In particular, many women of color were further constrained by the compounding effects of entrenched racial, ethnic, and gender biases, reinforcing a societal hierarchy where they had diminished status when compared with white women.

Today, many of these attitudes and practices that spurred the initial proposal of the ERA have long since been rejected. Even without the ERA, women, people across the gender spectrum, and people of color have made enormous strides to elevate their status, secure important legal protections, and gain opportunities across society. But there is still work to do.

If finally added to the U.S. Constitution, the ERA could strengthen workplace protections, remove restrictions barring access to reproductive health care, and bolster other existing statutory protections that are currently vulnerable to attack by the Trump administration and conservative lawmakers. <[link removed]>

The current push for the ERA is a continued reminder that empty rhetoric and half-measures claiming to support and empower women and people across the gender spectrum are entirely inadequate. Instead, we must formally recognize their equal rights in the nation's founding document.

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