March 12, 2009 Issue
The Equal Rights Amendment: Unfinished Business for the Constitution
DVD Available for Checkout at Watauga Library
While women have gained significant ground since the founding of this nation, the U.S. Constitution still does not guarantee to women equal rights under the law. Since 1923, activists have fought to pass the Equal Rights Amendment to the Constitution to secure equality for women, but to this day, not enough states have ratified the amendment.
To learn more about the Equal Rights Amendment in just 17 minutes, check out The Equal Rights Amendment: Unfinished Business for the Constitution, a DVD available at the Watauga Public Library. Ruth Pollak of the Educational Film Center produced the documentary for the Alice Paul Institute in 1998.
After women’s right to vote was guaranteed by the 19th Amendment to the Constitution in 1920, suffragist leader Alice Paul wrote the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA) in 1923 as the next step toward women’s equality. Congress passed the ERA in 1972. Thirty-eight states are required to ratify the amendment, but political opposition to the ERA stopped the effort at 35—three states short—by the 1982 ratification deadline.
Since that time, the ERA has regularly been reintroduced in Congress, and recent legal analysis leads ERA proponents to believe that the existing 35 state ratifications could still be valid.
North Carolina is among the states that have not ratified the ERA.
The film explains the history of the women’s movement and the ERA from the pre-Civil War days of Elizabeth Cady Stanton, to the big push for the ERA in the 1970s, to recent efforts in the 1990s.
For more information about the ERA, click to www.EqualRightsAmendment.org. For the Watauga Public Library, call 828-264-8784.
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