The first women’s rights convention in the U.S. called by women met in Seneca Falls, New York in 1848, over 170 years ago now. The five women who organized the convention, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Lucretia Mott, Mary McClintock, Martha Coffin Wright, and Jane Hunt were all abolitionists. Their founding document, The Declaration of Sentiments, outlined 19 “abuses and usurpations” cemented in law, including the inability to own property or vote, and asserted the equality of women in private and public life including politics, education, and religion.
The woman’s suffrage movement, which focused on securing the right to vote, required women’s unflagging commitment and the endurance of hardship and abuse before women were granted the right to vote by the 19th amendment in 1920, 72 years after the convention in New York.
The Equal Rights Amendment, written by Alice Paul and originally called the Lucretia Mott Amendment, was first introduced into Congress in 1923 but was never passed. Paul rewrote it in 1943 to read: “Equality of rights under the law shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any state on account of sex,” and it was finally passed in 1972 but has still has not been ratified by 3/4 of the states. Thirty eight states are needed to ratify the amendment so it will become part of the U.S. Constitution, and only 35 had done so up until 2017 when Nevada finally ratified it, and 2018 when Illinois finally did, leaving 1 STATE LEFT needed to ratify! The states that still need to ratify the ERA are listed below. Help us get the ERA ratified by their state legislatures!
- Alabama
- Arizona
- Arkansas
- Florida
- Georgia
- Louisiana
- Mississippi
- Missouri
- North Carolina
- Oklahoma
- South Carolina
- Virginia
- Utah