The Equal Rights Amendment (ERA) was written in 1923 by Alice Paul, suffragist leader and founder of the National Woman's Party. She and the NWP considered the ERA to be the next necessary step after the 19th Amendment (Woman Suffrage) in guaranteeing "equal justice under law" to all citizens.
The ERA was introduced into every session of Congress between 1923 and 1972, when it was passed and sent to the states for ratification. The seven-year time limit in the ERA's proposing clause was extended by Congress to June 30, 1982, but at the deadline, the ERA had been ratified by 35 states, leaving it three states short of the 38 required for ratification. It has been reintroduced into every Congress since that time.
In the 108th Congress (2003 - 2004), the Equal Rights Amendment was introduced as S.J. Res. 11 (Sen. Edward Kennedy, MA, chief sponsor) and H.J. Res. 37 (Rep. Carolyn Maloney, NY, chief sponsor). These bills impose no deadline on the ratification process in their proposing clauses.
Although the 1920 ratification of the 19th Amendment had guaranteed American women's right to vote, Alice Paul argued that this right alone would not end remaining vestiges of legal discrimination based upon gender. In 1923, Paul drafted the Equal Rights Amendment and presented it as the "Lucretia Mott Amendment" at the celebration of the 75th anniversary of the 1848 Seneca Falls Declaration of Sentiments.
The National Women's Party took the ERA to Congress in the 1920s, where Senator Charles Curtis and Representative Daniel R. Anthony, Jr. — both Republicans and both from Kansas — introduced it for the first time as Senate Joint Resolution No. 21 on December 10, 1923, and as House Joint Resolution No. 75 on December 13, 1923, respectively. Though the ERA was introduced in every session of Congress between 1923 and 1970, it never reached the floor of either the Senate or the House of Representatives for a vote—instead, it was usually "bottled up" in committee.
Representative Martha W. Griffiths of Michigan, however, achieved success on Capitol Hill with her House Joint Resolution No. 208, which was adopted by the House of Representatives on October 12, 1971, with a vote of 354 yeas, 24 nays and 51 not voting (117 Congressional Record 35815). Griffiths' joint resolution was then adopted by the Senate on March 22, 1972, with a vote of 84 yeas, 8 nays and 7 not voting (118 Congressional Record 9598). And with that, the ERA was finally presented by the 92nd Congress to the state legislatures for ratification, as Article V of the Constitution prescribes.
