ERA Defeated

The Equal Rights Amendment — which simply stated that 'equality of rights under the law shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any state on account of sex' — passed Congress in 1972 with broad bipartisan support and was sent to states for ratification. It needed 38 states. It reached 35 and stalled. Phyllis Schlafly's STOP ERA campaign, launched in 1972, was the primary organized opposition. Schlafly argued that the ERA would eliminate gender-specific protections for women (alimony, draft exemption, sex-segregated bathrooms), destroy the family, and undermine the divine order of male headship. She built a network of housewife-activists who lobbied state legislatures, many of them baking bread and bringing home-cooked meals to legislators as part of a deliberate anti-feminist performance. The ERA's defeat was the anti-feminist movement's signature win and established that organized conservative women, who argued the ERA would cost them legal protections, were a potent political force. The framework Schlafly built, and the infrastructure of women's conservative organizing she created, fed directly into the broader Christian right's political machinery. Critics noted the tension: Schlafly — who held a master's in government from Radcliffe and later a law degree from Washington University, and spent decades traveling, debating, and building a political organization — argued that most women's highest calling was the home.

Themes this entry appears in

• Patriarchy
• Christian Nationalism
• Gender & Patriarchy

Connections to ERA Defeated

• Concerned Women for America opposed (1979) — CWA was founded in part as an anti-ERA organization and lobbied actively against the Equal Rights Amendment through its defeat in 1982. It worked in coordination with Phyllis Schlafly's Eagle Forum, providing a church-based grassroots organizing layer that Schlafly's organization lacked. The ERA defeat demonstrated the political effectiveness of women-organized anti-feminist mobilization — a template CWA continued to apply to subsequent feminist and LGBTQ legislation.
• National Organization for Women influenced (1982) — NOW was the primary organizational force behind the ERA ratification campaign from 1972 through its defeat in 1982. NOW organized state-by-state ratification efforts, lobbied legislators, staged demonstrations, and provided the institutional infrastructure for the pro-ERA coalition. The ERA's defeat in 1982 — the 'era-defeat' event — was the direct outcome of a decade-long contest between NOW's ratification campaign and Phyllis Schlafly's Stop ERA counter-campaign.
• Phyllis Schlafly influenced (1982) — Schlafly's STOP ERA campaign, launched in 1972, organized the sustained state-level opposition that prevented ratification. Her network of housewife-activists is credited by historians as the decisive factor in the ERA's failure.

Sources

• Jesus and John Wayne — Kristin Kobes Du Mez (2020), pp. 60-72