Editing Equal Rights Amendment (section)

=== Post-World War II developments (1940s–1960s) ===
[[World War II]] was correlated with a rise supporters of the ERA. Due to the war, many women had to take on untraditional roles at home and in the workforce. Protectionists were against the ERA because they believed women need to be treated differently than men, because they are biologically different. Women entered the workforce and proved they could handle working the same jobs as men, including joining the U.S. Armed Forces. Women were supporting their country, despite not being compensated or respected fairly. With the increased patriotism in the country people began to see the value of women being involved in their country. As the war continued, more opportunities for women to work opened up due to fewer men being available. The support for equality grew with this as women continued to prove their ability and willingness to work.<ref>{{Cite journal |last=Rebecca DeWolf |date=2017 |title=The Equal Rights Amendment and the Rise of Emancipationism, 1932–1946 |url=http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.5250/fronjwomestud.38.2.0047 |journal=Frontiers: A Journal of Women Studies |volume=38 |issue=2 |pages=47 |doi=10.5250/fronjwomestud.38.2.0047|jstor=10.5250/fronjwomestud.38.2.0047}}</ref>

==== Initial support from the Republican Party and the Hayden rider ====
The [[Republican Party (United States)|Republican Party]] included support of the ERA in its platform beginning in [[1940 Republican National Convention|1940]], renewing the plank every four years until [[1980 United States presidential election|1980]].<ref name="'70s 245">{{Cite book |last=Frum |first=David |author-link=David Frum |url=https://archive.org/details/howwegothere70sd00frum/page/245 |title=How We Got Here: The '70s |publisher=[[Basic Books]] |year=2000 |isbn=0-465-04195-7 |location=New York, New York |pages=[https://archive.org/details/howwegothere70sd00frum/page/245 245–248]}}</ref> The main support base for the ERA until the late 1960s was among middle class Republican women, while some Southern Democrats also supported it.<ref name=":2">{{Cite web |title=From Suffrage to Women's Liberation |url=https://www.cwluherstory.org/classic-feminist-writings-articles/from-suffrage-to-womens-liberation |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20190603070901/https://www.cwluherstory.org/classic-feminist-writings-articles/from-suffrage-to-womens-liberation |archive-date=June 3, 2019 |access-date=June 3, 2019 |website=CWLU Herstory |language=en-US}}</ref><ref name="'70s 245" />

In 1950 and 1953, the ERA was passed by the Senate with a provision known as "the Hayden rider", introduced by [[Arizona]] senator [[Carl Hayden]]. The Hayden rider added a sentence to the ERA to keep special protections for women: "The provisions of this article shall not be construed to impair any rights, benefits, or exemptions now or hereafter conferred by law upon persons of the female sex." By allowing women to keep their existing and future special protections, it was expected that the ERA would be more appealing to its opponents. Though opponents were marginally more in favor of the ERA with the Hayden rider, supporters of the original ERA believed it negated the amendment's original purpose—causing the amendment not to be passed in the House.<ref>{{Cite web |url=http://content.cdlib.org/view?docId=kt6f59n89c&brand=calisphere&doc.view=entire_text |title=Conversations with Alice Paul: Woman Suffrage and the Equal Rights Amendment. |website=cdlib.org |publisher=Suffragists Oral History Project}}</ref><ref>{{Cite web |url=http://www.jofreeman.com/lawandpolicy/eraname.htm |title=What's in a Name? Does it matter how the Equal Rights Amendment is worded? |website=jofreeman.com}}</ref><ref name="auto1">{{Cite book |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=AXlSB6-WpKUC&pg=PA31 |title=On Account of Sex: The Politics of Women's Issues, 1945–1968 |last=Harrison |first=Cynthia Ellen |publisher=University of California Press |year=1989 |isbn=978-0-520-90930-4 |pages=31–32}}</ref>

ERA supporters were hopeful that the second term of President [[Dwight D. Eisenhower|Dwight Eisenhower]] would advance their agenda. Eisenhower had publicly promised to "assure women everywhere in our land equality of rights," and in 1958, Eisenhower asked a [[joint session of the United States Congress|joint session of Congress]] to pass the Equal Rights Amendment, the first president to show such a level of support for the amendment. However, the National Woman's Party found the amendment to be unacceptable and asked it to be withdrawn whenever the Hayden rider was added to the ERA.<ref name="auto1" />

==== Initial opposition from the New Deal Democrats ====
[[Eleanor Roosevelt]] and most [[New Deal]]ers opposed the ERA. They felt that ERA was designed for middle-class women, but that working-class women needed government protection. They also feared that the ERA would undercut the male-dominated labor unions that were a core component of the [[New Deal coalition]]. Most Northern [[Democratic Party (United States)|Democrats]], who aligned themselves with the anti-ERA labor unions, opposed the amendment.<ref name="'70s 245" />

The ERA was also opposed by the [[American Federation of Labor]] and other labor unions, which feared the amendment would invalidate protective labor legislation for women. The [[League of Women Voters]], formerly the [[National American Woman Suffrage Association]], opposed the Equal Rights Amendment until 1972, fearing the loss of protective labor legislation.<ref name=":2" />

At the [[1944 Democratic National Convention]], the Democrats made the divisive step of including the ERA in their platform, but this was a hotly contested change not reflected in later party platforms.<ref name="'70s 245" /> At the [[1960 Democratic National Convention|Democratic National Convention in 1960]], a proposal to endorse the ERA was rejected after it was opposed by groups including the [[American Civil Liberties Union]]<ref>{{Cite book |url=https://archive.org/details/annualreportamer00amer_2/page/106/mode/2up |title=Clearing the Main Channels, ACLU's 1954–55 Annual Report |publisher=American Civil Liberties Union <!-- |others=University of Alberta Libraries --> |year=1955 |pages=106–107}}</ref> (ACLU), the [[AFL-CIO]], labor unions such as the [[American Federation of Teachers]], [[Americans for Democratic Action]] (ADA), the [[American Nurses Association]], the Women's Division of the [[Methodist Church (USA)|Methodist Church]], and the National Councils of Jewish, Catholic, and Negro Women.<ref>{{Cite book |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=LF8ov6Vc4YQC&pg=PA209 |title=A Room at a Time: How Women Entered Party Politics |last=Freeman |first=Jo |publisher=Rowman & Littlefield |year=2002 |isbn=978-0-8476-9805-9 |page=209 |author-link=Jo Freeman}}</ref> 

Between 1948 and 1970, chairman [[Emanuel Celler]] of the House Judiciary Committee, refused to consider the ERA in the House of Representatives.<ref>{{Cite web |last=Neale |first=Thomas |date=December 23, 2019 |title=Congressional Research Service, Proposed Equal Rights Amendment: Contemporary Ratification Issues |url=https://crsreports.congress.gov/product/pdf/R/R42979}}</ref>

==== Support from the Democratic Party under Kennedy ====
Presidential candidate [[John F. Kennedy]] announced his support of the ERA in an October 21, 1960, letter to the chairman of the National Woman's Party.<ref>{{Cite web |url=http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/index.php?pid=74146 |title=Letter to Mrs. Emma Guffey Miller, Chairman of the National Woman's Party |last=Kennedy |first=John F. |author-link=John F. Kennedy |date=October 21, 1960 |publisher=University of California at Santa Barbara}}</ref> Ultimately however, as president, Kennedy's ties to labor unions meant that he and his administration did not support the ERA.<ref>{{Cite book |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=PEojQDou7MIC&pg=PA864 |title=Encyclopedia of the Kennedys: The People and Events That Shaped America |last=Siracusa |first=Joseph M. |publisher=[[ABC-CLIO]] |location=Santa Barbara, California|year=2012 |isbn=978-1-59884-539-6 |page=864}}</ref>

Kennedy did appoint a [[Blue-ribbon committee|blue-ribbon commission]] on women, the [[Presidential Commission on the Status of Women|President's Commission on the Status of Women]], to investigate the problem of sex discrimination in the United States.<ref>{{Cite journal |last=Harrison |first=Cynthia E. |date=1980 |title=A "New Frontier" for Women: The Public Policy of the Kennedy Administration |url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/1889871 |journal=The Journal of American History |volume=67 |issue=3 |pages=630–646 |doi=10.2307/1889871 |jstor=1889871 |issn=0021-8723}}</ref> The commission was chaired by [[Eleanor Roosevelt]], who opposed the ERA but no longer spoke against it publicly. In the early 1960s, Eleanor Roosevelt announced that, due to unionization, she believed the ERA was no longer a threat to women as it once may have been and told supporters that, as far as she was concerned, they could have the amendment if they wanted it. However, she never went so far as to endorse the ERA. The commission that she chaired reported (after her death) that no ERA was needed, believing that the Supreme Court could give sex the same "suspect" test as race and national origin, through interpretation of the Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments of the Constitution.<ref>{{Cite book |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=55XG0oS3XyYC&pg=PA184 |title=Eleanor Roosevelt and the Media: A Public Quest for Self-fulfillment |last=Beasley |first=Maurine Hoffman |publisher=University of Illinois Press |year=1987 |isbn=978-0-252-01376-8 |page=184}}</ref><ref>{{Cite web |url=https://guides.loc.gov/american-women-essays/era-ratification-effort |title=Research Guides: American Women: Topical Essays: The Long Road to Equality: What Women Won from the ERA Ratification Effort |last=Berberian |first=Laura |website=guides.loc.gov |language=en |access-date=November 5, 2019}}</ref> The Supreme Court did not provide the "suspect" class test for sex, however, resulting in a continuing lack of equal rights. The commission did, though, help win passage of the [[Equal Pay Act of 1963]], which banned sex discrimination in wages in a number of professions (it would later be amended in the early 1970s to include the professions that it initially excluded) and secured an [[executive order]] from Kennedy eliminating sex discrimination in the [[civil service]]. The commission, composed largely of anti-ERA feminists with ties to labor, proposed remedies to the widespread sex discrimination it unearthed.<ref>{{cite book |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=EDd2aNCoGlYC |title=Public Women, Public Words: A Documentary History of American Feminism, Volume III: 1960 to the Present |publisher=[[Rowman & Littlefield]] |location=Lanham, Maryland|year=2005 |isbn=978-0-7425-2236-7 |editor-last=Keetley |editor-first=Dawn |page=251 |editor-last2=Pettegrew |editor-first2=John}}</ref>

The national commission spurred the establishment of state and local commissions on the status of women and arranged for follow-up conferences in the years to come. The following year, the [[Civil Rights Act of 1964]] banned workplace discrimination not only on the basis of race, religion, and national origin, but also on the basis of sex, thanks to the lobbying of [[Alice Paul]] and [[Coretta Scott King]] and the political influence of Representative [[Martha Griffiths]] of [[Michigan]].<ref>{{Cite journal |last=Haug |first=Kate |date=2016 |title=News Today: A History of the Poor People's Campaign in Real Time |url=http://www.resurrectioncity.us/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/News_Today.pdf |journal=Irving Street Projects |pages=1–84}}</ref>

==== Impact of second-wave feminism ====
[[File:Shirely Chisholm at the 1984 DNC.jpg|thumb|Shirley Chisholm seated at the 1984 Democratic National Convention in San Francisco, California.  ]]
[[Second-wave feminism|A new women's movement]] gained ground in the later 1960s as a result of a variety of factors: [[Betty Friedan]]'s bestseller ''[[The Feminine Mystique]]''; the network of women's rights commissions formed by Kennedy's national commission; the frustration over women's social and economic status; and anger over the lack of government and [[Equal Employment Opportunity Commission]] enforcement of the Equal Pay Act and Title VII of the Civil Rights Act. In June 1966, at the Third National Conference on the Status of Women in [[Washington, D.C.]], Betty Friedan and a group of activists frustrated with the lack of government action in enforcing Title VII of the Civil Rights Act formed the [[National Organization for Women]] (NOW) to act as an "NAACP for women", demanding full equality for American women and men.<ref name="Schneir 1994 95">{{Cite book|title=Feminism in Our Time: The Essential Writings, World War II to the Present|last=Schneir|first=Miriam|publisher=[[Vintage Books]]|location=New York City|year=1994|page=95}}</ref> In 1967, at the urging of Alice Paul, NOW endorsed the Equal Rights Amendment.{{citation needed|date=May 2018}}<ref>{{Cite web |title=Highlights |publisher=National Organization for Women |url=https://now.org/about/history/highlights/ |access-date=2024-12-11 |language=en-US}}</ref> The decision caused some union Democrats and social conservatives to leave the organization and form the [[Women's Equity Action League]] (within a few years WEAL also endorsed the ERA), but the move to support the amendment benefited NOW, bolstering its membership.{{citation needed|date=May 2018}} By the late 1960s, NOW had made significant political and legislative victories and was gaining enough power to become a major lobbying force. In 1969, newly elected representative [[Shirley Chisholm]] of [[New York (state)|New York]] gave her famous speech "Equal Rights for Women" on the floor of the U.S. House of Representatives.<ref>{{Cite web|last=Chisolm|first=Shirley|author-link=Shirley Chisholm|date=May 21, 1969|title=Equal Rights for Women|url=http://www.emersonkent.com/speeches/equal_rights_for_women.htm|access-date=June 6, 2020|publisher=Emerson Kent}}</ref>