An Overdue Deadline for an Overdue Amendment

By gillian b. ‘21

Earlier this year, Virginia cast a historic vote: the final necessary vote to pass the Equal Rights Amendment to the Constitution. This amendment states that “Equality of rights under the law shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any state on account of sex.” Congress approved this amendment in 1972, but it took until 2020 for the final state (Virginia in this case) to vote to ratify it, providing the required two-thirds of the states in agreement. However, despite this apparent victory for women nationally, there is still one more battle that the Equal Rights Amendment (or ERA for short) must fight. Since it was originally introduced in 1923, the allotted deadline for ratification, 1982, has long passed. While an extension was passed in the House of Representatives, giving the amendment the necessary time to be officially added to the U.S. Constitution, the Senate has not yet voted for it. The ERA represents the larger national shift from a patriarchal-focused country to one that is based on gender equality; holding the ERA to its original, and now outdated deadline would minimize the role of women in America’s past, present, and future. 

As pointedly stated by Elizabeth Cady Stanton and the Seneca Falls Convention in the Declaration of Sentiments, echoing the Declaration of Independence, “all men and women are created equal.” Since those words were published in the 19th century, American women have fought for suffrage, domestic rights, the rights to own property, and more. However, women’s battle for equality is in no way finished, with the wage gap and sexual harassment being prime examples of ongoing struggles related to women’s rights. The ERA would be official political acknowledgement in one of the founding documents of the United States, of the equality of women. Passing it would do what the Declaration of Sentiments tried to do: to alter America’s founding ever so slightly, for the sake of acknowledging and accepting women as equal to men. This acknowledgement would impact people in a way that sticking to an outdated deadline cannot.

Additionally, if the 1982 deadline is not repealed, then what was the point of these years of debating and attempting to get the ERA ratified? Many states voted for the amendment long after 1982: Nevada in 2017, Illinois in 2018, and Virginia in 2020. If the deadline were going to remain regardless, why vote to begin with? Not only would passing the ERA acknowledge women’s role in American society, but it would also finalize the work of those who fought for it in government for many years both before and after 1982.

In a way, the ERA has had a similar existence to that of women in America; though existing for many years prior to debates about the validity of its existence, the ERA stood proud, for longer than many anticipated it would, until it had received justice (in the form of enough state ratification votes). Nullifying the long overdue deadline of 1982 to officially add the ERA to the United States Constitution would validate the contributions of women nationally, and prove once and for all that yes, “all men and women are created equal.”