The Unstoppable Mothers of the Equal Rights Amendment

Meet the brilliant women who persisted across generations to change the Constitution. In her new book, WE THE WOMEN, author Julie C. Suk, tells the story of the ERA through the voices of the bold women lawmakers who created it. Despite significant gains, the achievements of gender equality have fallen short, especially for working mothers and women of color. Suk excavates the ERA’s past to guide its future, explaining how the ERA can address hot-button issues such as pregnancy discrimination, sexual harassment, and unequal pay.

After passage of the Nineteenth Amendment, revolutionary women demanded full equality beyond suffrage by proposing the Equal Rights Amendment. Congress took almost 50 years to adopt it in 1972 and the states took almost as long to ratify it. In January 2020, Virginia became the final state needed to ratify the amendment. Why did the ERA take so long? Is it too late to add it to the Constitution? And what could it do for women?

This is a virtual event, please register. 

Books can be ordered for pick up at the Westport Library. 

JULIE C. SUK is a frequent commentator in the media on legal issues affecting women, including The New York Times, The Washington Post, Vox, and CBS News. The House Judiciary Committee cited Suk’s article, “An Equal Rights Amendment for the Twenty-First Century: Bringing Global Constitutionalism Home” in its report leading to the House’s historic vote in 2020 to remove the ERA ratification deadline. Suk is a professor of sociology, political science, and liberal studies at The Graduate Center of the City University of New York (CUNY), where she also serves as the academic dean overseeing the Graduate Center’s interdisciplinary master’s programs. Prior to joining The Graduate Center, Suk was a law professor for 13 years at Cardozo Law School in New York, and taught as a visiting professor at the law schools at Harvard, Columbia, University of Chicago, and UCLA. In Fall 2020, she will be a Visiting Professor at Yale Law School. She has lectured widely in the United States and Europe and has been a visiting fellow at the European University Institute in Florence and LUISS-Guido Carli in Rome. She has a J.D. from Yale Law School, where she studied on a Paul & Daisy Soros Fellowship for New Americans and a D.Phil. in Politics from Oxford University, where she held a Marshall Scholarship.

History of the Equal Rights Amendment

The Constitutional Amendment Process

Women's Health

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