“Reading shaped my dreams, and more reading helped me make my dreams come true.”
Ruth Bader Ginsburg, U.S. Supreme Court Justice, 1993-2020.
Equal protections for all employees is the underlying principle of the proposed Equal Rights Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.
Gender should not determine the legal rights of men or women.
Women are 58.7% of the U.S. workforce but they earned 99 cents compared to each $1 paid to men in 2022 despite the fact that 50.62% head-of-households were female.
Many state and federal laws currently discriminate against female employees the ERA amendment would invalidate existing discriminatory laws.
Inching Toward Equality
The ERA was originally introduced in Congress in 1923. It was reintroduced in every session of Congress between 1923-70 but failed to move out of committee each time.
Representative Martha Griffiths reintroduced the ERA in 1971. It was adopted by the 92nd Congress. The House passed the ERA with a bipartisan vote of 354 to 24, and the Senate passed it with a bipartisan vote of 84 to 8.
An amendment requires ratification by 38 or more state legislatures, according to Article Five of the Constitution. Thirty-five states adopted the ERA prior to the congressional deadline, which had been extended to 1982. Nevada, Illinois, and Virginia ratified the ERA between 2017-20.
Representative Griffiths, 1912-2003, was the first female member of the Michigan Democratic Party to serve in Congress and the first woman to serve on the House Committee on Ways and Means.
She was first elected to the House of Representatives in 1954, was re–elected nine times, and served through 1974.
New Mexico Ratifies
The New Mexico Constitutional Amendment 1, Equal Rights Regardless of Sex Amendment, was on the ballot as a legislatively referred amendment to the state constitution on November 7, 1972. It was approved: 70.60 percent to 29.40 percent.
The New Mexico Supreme Court 1999 ruling stated that state laws must comply with equal protection principles. The state constitution guarantees equal rights under the law, regardless of sex The state legislature passed the ERA amendment to the U.S. Constitution in 1974 but it faced legal challenges.
Cultural Expectations
Two-parent households were considered the norm during the first half of the 20th century.
Male employment generally focused on engineering, medicine, and careers requiring high levels of technical skill or physical strength. Women managed the household and/or had careers in education, secretarial services, or nursing.
Those cultural norms had changed dramatically by the end of the century.
Women gained access to jobs in every corner of the U.S. economy with the passage of the 1965 Equal Employment federal legislation, which included requiring employers to provide timetables for increasing the number of female employees.
That legislation resulted in colleges and universities creating women’s studies programs; a record number of women ran for and were elected to political offices; and women could no longer be fired because of pregnancy.
The 1972 Title IX Higher Education Act prohibited discrimination on the basis of sex in federally funded educational programs. This resulted in allmale schools accepting female students; and educational institutions’ athletic departments created and funded female teams.
The Pay Gap
The U.S. workforce is 58.7% female - 169 million women compared to 166 million males, according to the most recent U.S. Census. But almost 90% of women were working for companies that paid them less than their male colleagues who held the same jobs.
The most recent Equal Employment Opportunity Commission report, 2013, identified annual median earnings: women working full time earned $39,157 compared to men, $50,033.
Differences in opportunities are the main cause of the gender pay gap.
Women held only 7% of the science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) jobs in 1970.
By 2023 women were 26 percent of the STEM workforce despite inequality in salaries between male and female employees.
A 2015-17 survey of 559 engineering and computer science graduates from more than two dozen U.S. colleges found that women earned $61,000 in their first jobs compared to $65,000 for men, despite having the same degrees and grade point averages.
The pay gap is wider for some jobs than others - the top positions with the largest gap include sales, supervisory positions, emergency responder, finance, skilled healthcare, technical jobs, the clergy and other careers, according to 2025 Payscale data.
In nine out of 17 sectors, men were earning 10% more on average than women. In construction, financial, and insurance services men earned between 20 and 23% more than women who held the same positions. Banks had salary differentials as high as 43% between some male employees and women with the same job responsibilities. The ERA Today
More than a century has passed since the ERA was first introduced in Congress.
The ratification status of the ERA has long been debated.
The amendment continues to languish in the judicial quagmire of pending Congressional legislation.
“The Constitution’s Preamble says, ‘We the People . . . in Order to form a more perfect Union.’ The Union will be more perfect if we added this clarion statement to our fundamental instrument of government: Men and women are persons of equal-citizenship stature. . . . Why should the rest of the world have the equivalent of an ERA while the United States lags behind?” said Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, 2020.
SIDEBAR
Eight federal laws that protect female employees: ● The 1938 Fair Labor Standards Act set the minimum wage. This wage directly affects employees who are single and head of household.
● The 1963 Equal Pay Act makes it illegal to pay women a lower wage than men simply based on sex.
● The Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 (Title VII) Equal Employment requires employers to provide timetables for increasing the number of females in their workforce.
● The 1978 Pregnancy Discrimination Action made discrimination based on pregnancy or pregnancyrelated conditions illegal.
● The 1993 Family and Medical Leave Act allows female (and male employees) to take up to 12 weeks of unpaid leave to care for a newborn child or newly adopted child.
● The 1994 Uniformed Services Employment and Reemployment Rights Act requires employers to protect the jobs of active duty or reserve military personnel when they are deployed to active duty.
● The 2010 Affordable Care Act includes provisions that require employers to provide female employees with a private space and the time to express breast milk.
● The 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act allows businesses to deduct monetary payments to settle claims of sexual harassment or sexual abuse as an expense but only if the settlement does not include a nondisclosure agreement; legal fees incurred during the settlement process are no longer tax deductible.