III.

Equal Rights Amendment

To ensure economic equality and other rights for women, NOW launched a major campaign in the 1970s to pass an Equal Rights Amendment (ERA) to the U.S. Constitution. The ERA would provide equality for both sexes under the law, making unconstitutional any laws that grant one sex different rights. Although the Congress of the United States approved the amendment in 1972, it failed to become part of the U.S. Constitution when only 35 of the necessary 38 states voted by 1982 to ratify it. However, NOW’s high-profile effort in the ERA made it one of the country’s most influential women’s rights groups. NOW’s membership increased from about 3,000 people in 1970 to 100,000 people in 1979, and the organization began operating with multimillion-dollar annual budgets. NOW continued to lobby for the ERA throughout the 1980s and 1990s. In the mid-1990s, the organization added new provisions to the proposed amendment to guarantee reproductive rights for women and equal rights for lesbians and gay men.