Senate Approves Equal Rights Amendment for Women by Vote of 63-19
The U.S. Senate on this day passed the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA), a proposed amendment to the Constitution that would guarantee equality for women.
The vote was 63-19, but it included a rider that retained protective legislation for women workers. Objections from most women’s groups and liberals had blocked passage of the ERA since it was firs drafted by Alice Paul on July 21, 1923.
Most political observers were surprised by the Senate vote, as it was the first time the ERA had ever achieved such a large majority. Nonetheless, it proved to be a final gasp for the ERA in the decade of the 1950s, and support did not revive until the birth of the new feminist movement in the mid-1960s.
Learn more about the ERA: http://www.equalrightsamendment.org/
Read: Mary Frances Berry, Why ERA Failed: Politics, Women’s Rights, and the Amending Process of the Constitution (1988)
View a chronology of the history of the ERA here