30 Apr Busting Bias: Publishing the ERA Now Is Essential

What if we’d had the Equal Rights Amendment in the Constitution for the past 50 years?

by Zakiya Thomas

As a Black woman in the United States, I’ve always known that my rights are precarious. The patchwork of laws intended to protect against discrimination isn’t enough. We need a foundation that can be guaranteed only by the Constitution; we need the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA).

We all stand to gain from the ERA. With equal pay, Black and Brown families could have more financial security, and we could combat the sexism and racism at the root of maternal mortality. LGBTQAI+ communities could have protection against discrimination and violence. And we could finally stop playing politics with reproductive health care.

Take the gender pay gap. In 2022, on average, women made 84 cents for every dollar made by white men, leading to a loss of nearly $400,000 over the span of a 40-year career. For Latina women, the amount is $1.2 million in lost wages. Imagine the difference those funds would mean for families across the country.

What if we’d had the Equal Rights Amendment in the Constitution for the last 50 years? Maybe in my first job, I wouldn’t have been paid $6,000 less than the man I supervised. Or, later in my career, I wouldn’t have lost a job because I told my boss to stop hitting on me. What would my financial security be if I’d been paid what I should have been, compounded throughout my career?

My health and physical safety could be impacted as well. Thanks to the protection the Affordable Care Act (ACA) offers against charging women more for care, I have access to affordable preventative, reproductive, and mental health care. But the ACA is a law, which could be changed by a future Congress or Supreme Court. Unlike a law, a constitutional amendment can’t be changed so easily; we need the Equal Rights Amendment to strengthen and protect existing laws.

First introduced in Congress in 1923, the Equal Rights Amendment was passed by both houses of Congress with bipartisan support in 1972. Nearly 50 years later, the 38th state needed to ratify the amendment did so, in 2020. The Equal Rights Amendment has met all requirements to be added to the Constitution and should have taken effect in 2023; it didn’t. The reasons? Money and politics.

We are in a political moment, and we need to act. Currently there are bipartisan resolutions pending in Congress to affirm the ERA as valid and calling on the US archivist, who is in charge of certifying and publishing amendments, to publish the Equal Rights Amendment.

What can you do?

• Vote for ERA champions and against opponents in state and federal elections.

• Call your member of Congress and tell them you want the Equal Rights Amendment affirmed as the 28th Amendment.

• Support organizations fighting against gender inequality, prejudice, and violence against LGBTQ+ and gender-nonbinary people, and racism.

• Support the ERA Coalition (Eracoalition.org) and its work to see the Equal Rights Amendment added to the US Constitution. DW

Zakiya Thomas is the president and CEO of ERA Coalition and ERA Coalition Forward. The ERA Coalition was founded in 2014 to bring concerted public education, power building, and momentum to the effort to finally make constitutional equality a reality.