In 1776, as the United States gained independence from the United Kingdom, Abigail Adams urged her husband John to keep women in mind when establishing a new government. “Do not put such unlimited power into the hands of the husbands,” she wrote. “Remember, all men would be tyrants if they could. If particular care and attention is not paid to the ladies, we are determined to foment a rebellion, and will not hold ourselves bound by any laws in which we have no voice or representation.” In response, John Adams wrote back, “I cannot but laugh. Depend upon it, we know better than to repeal our masculine systems.”

In this way, the phrase “We the People” was designed and drafted in the Constitution to guarantee rights only to specific white males. It was not until 1848 that the first women’s rights convention was held, organized in Seneca Falls, New York, by Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Lucretia Mott. After the Civil War, Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Sojourner Truth tirelessly advocated for the inclusion of women in the new constitutional amendments that gave voting rights to former slaves. Their failure only fueled the movement’s fire. In 1872, Anthony cast a ballot in the presidential election and cited her citizenship under the Fourteenth Amendment. She was arrested, tried, convicted, and fined $100, which she refused to pay. A Supreme Court ruling shortly afterward in Minor v. Happersett (1875) noted that while women may be citizens, all citizens were not necessarily voters, and states were not required to allow women to vote.

At the turn of the century, women increasingly joined the workforce — with roles outside of the home and a newfound sense of purpose and independence, women ginned up the support to win the right to vote. The Nineteenth Amendment was the first (and is the only) written guarantee of women’s equal rights in the United States Constitution. After the amendment’s ratification, many laws and practices in the workplace and in society still perpetuated the privileged status of men and cemented the place of women as second-class citizens. For this reason, Alice Paul introduced the Equal Rights Amendment in Seneca Falls in 1923. The text of the amendment as yet unratified reads:

Section 1: Equality of rights under the law shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of sex.

Section 2: Congress and the several States shall have the power to enforce, by appropriate legislation, the provisions of this article.

Section 3: This amendment shall take effect two years after the date of ratification.

The ERA is not the law of the land, but its ratification would help women. According to The Alice Paul Institute, the reasons why America needs the ERA are at one level philosophical and symbolic, and at another level very specific and practical. The first — and still the only — right that the U.S. Constitution specifically affirms equally for women and men is the right to vote. When the ERA is ratified, it would codify into law several things. Not only would it guarantee equal protection from discrimination regardless of sex, but it would establish a clear federal judicial standard for deciding cases of sex discrimination and provide a strong legal defense against a rollback of women’s rights, such as a potential repeal of Roe v. Wade and the Lilly Ledbetter Act. In addition, it would improve the United States’ standing in the world community — the governing documents of many other countries already affirm legal gender equality.

Existing judicial remedies for gender equality are lacking. The Fourteenth Amendment’s Equal Protection Clause was first applied to sex discrimination in 1971 and it has never been interpreted to grant equal rights on the basis of sex in the uniform and inclusive way that the ERA would. The last major Supreme Court decision on sex discrimination — which dealt with admission of women to Virginia Military Institute (VMI) in 1996 — demonstrated the fact that gender inequality is still a salient issue and that the nation has held onto the traditional assumption that women must prove they hold the same rights as men.

With the addition of the Equal Rights Amendment, there would be a strong legal defense against a rollback of women’s rights, and for the first time, “sex would be a suspect classification requiring the same high level of ‘strict scrutiny’ and having to meet the same high level of justification — a ‘necessary’ relation to a ‘compelling’ state interest — that the classification of race currently requires.” This would further clarify the standard lower courts ought to apply, as there is no consistency among jurisdictions in how they handle sex discrimination. While there are some legal prohibitions of sex discrimination, such as the Equal Pay Act (1963), Title VII and Title IX of the Civil Rights Act (1964), and the Pregnancy Discrimination Act (1978), these laws are able to be interpreted and enforced at the discretion of the lower courts, meaning that unless the Equal Rights Amendment is ratified, the advancement of women’s rights is subject to erosion or reversal.

However, one might wonder about the necessity of this amendment — would Congress dare to roll back women’s rights? While explicit forms of discrimination in legislation have been mostly eliminated, members of Congress have attempted more discreet methods of chipping away at women’s advancement. In regards to equal opportunity in education, members of Congress and Education Secretary Betsy DeVos have attempted to undermine Title IX by trying to revisit and “clarify” the law. The Trump administration has made it possible for insurance companies to stop covering contraceptives. Members of Congress have allowed the Violence Against Women Act to lapse without reauthorization. Congress has routinely blocked the United States from ratifying the UN Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women. If passed, the ERA will provide a solid standing in court that will prevent a rollback of women’s rights and make it easier for judges to find a basis for their ruling. Currently, 37 states have ratified the ERA, and 38 states are needed for the amendment to pass.