So now that we have Speaker Nancy Pelosi and a woman who is actually a serious candidate for the presidency, maybe the time has finally arrived when we can actually put women into the U.S. Constitution.
As Barbara Boxer says, "elections have consequences."
“Equality of rights under the law shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of sex.”
That's some radical amendment. Nothing radical about it until you get to the part that signifies women. Here we are in 2007, and equal rights for women is still a radical idea.
Federal and state lawmakers have launched a new drive to pass the Equal Rights Amendment, reviving a feminist goal that faltered a quarter-century ago when the measure did not gain the approval of three-quarters of the state legislatures.
The amendment, which came three states short of enactment in 1982, has been introduced in five state legislatures since January. Yesterday, House and Senate Democrats reintroduced the measure under a new name -- the Women's Equality Amendment -- and vowed to bring it to a vote in both chambers by the end of the session.
The renewed push to pass the ERA, which passed the House and Senate overwhelmingly in 1972 and was ratified by 35 states before skidding to a halt, highlights liberals' renewed sense of power since November's midterm elections. From Capitol Hill to Arkansas, legislators said they are seizing a political opportunity to enshrine women's rights in the Constitution.
Women have only been asking for the Equal Rights Amendment since 1923. The women who first campaigned for the right to vote did not live to see the day when the dream became reality. And Alice Paul, author of the ERA, has long since passed.
The ERA, aka the Women's Equality Amendment, is also known as the Alice Paul Amendment. Just as the 19th Amendment is known as the Susan B. Anthony Amendment. If history, or herstory, means anything, when we finally get women into the Constitution, we need to remember Alice Paul.
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