During the 1970s, the women’s rights movement also spurred the founding of the field of women’s history. The STOP ERA movement promoted the idea that traditional American women preferred the role of wife and mother, but these scholars detailed a history of women who had far more varied roles. Their work transformed our knowledge of women’s political activities and demonstrated the centrality of women to the founding and development of the United States. This generation of historians reclaimed the lives of women whose names rarely appeared in existing records, adding portraits of women like Harriet Tubman alongside those of the white men that line museum halls. Now, a generation of Americans has grown up learning about Abigail Adams’s call to “remember the ladies.” Their revision of the “traditional” notion of American womanhood might have won enough support to finally secure the ERA’s passage.
Furthermore, the hypothetical fears that the STOP ERA movement put forward have proved unsubstantiated. Women now serve in military combat roles. Laws criminalize the rape of men and women, so the ERA should not dissolve any gendered protections. A poll from March found that 49 percent of the nation’s working women already identify themselves — not a male partner — as the breadwinner. Even without the ERA, Obergefell v. Hodges ruled that states must recognize same-sex marriages.
Still, passing the ERA will not be easy. Fierce opposition has long accompanied feminist surges, and this is already happening today.
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