Guest Editor: Laura Mattoon D’Amore
Due date for receipt of papers is October 1, 2014
The failure of the Equal Rights Amendment links generations of feminists across nearly a century of activism. In 1923, Alice Paul introduced the Equal Rights Amendment to Congress for the first time, demanding equality of rights under the law, regardless of sex. The amendment was introduced unsuccessfully to every Congress since 1923. Though it became a central rallying point for Second Wave feminism, passing both houses of Congress in 1972, it ultimately failed to receive enough state ratifications before its deadline in 1982. Despite its repeated failure the ERA has served as a symbolic torch carried by generations of feminists fighting for women’s rights.
The ERA serves as a conduit for critical dialogues about equal rights, because while the cultural, legal, political, and intellectual heritage of the United States is rooted in the “self-evident” precept of equality, it has prevented the ratification of the Equal Rights Amendment for 90 years. Furthermore, the topic of the ERA sometimes alienates supporters of equal rights who criticize its complicity in marginalizing race, class, gender, and sexuality through its heteronormative focus on women’s rights. The subject of the ERA has also caused some intergenerational conflict. Some activist feminists who have been working on the ERA for decades—who were in the trenches when it failed in 1982—believe that they have a more true idea of the significance of the loss. Other activist feminists see the amendment as less relevant today than ever before, and are ready to rally efforts in other spaces. Academics are highly critical of the political, economic, and legal shortcomings of the past, of the failure to unite in the present, and of the ways that the rhetoric of women’s equality that is so tightly intertwined with the ERA is, in turn, marginalizing others (particularly in terms of its lack of connection to intersections of race, class, gender identity, and sexuality).
This Special Issue about The ERA in the 21st Century seeks to bring together an interdisciplinary array of scholars from such academic disciplines as women’s, gender, and sexuality studies, American studies, history, law, literature, and political science with practitioners from the legal and political professions and activists from grassroots organizations to discuss the proposed Equal Rights Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.
