NGOCSW 69 2025 Equal Rights Amendment

In 1995, at the Fourth World Conference on Women in Beijing, governments, including the United States, made historic commitments to advance gender equality and empower women and girls through the adoption of the Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action. Constitutional equality is a cornerstone of this, with Strategic Objective I.2 calling upon governments to “[p]rovide constitutional guarantees and/or enact appropriate legislation to prohibit discrimination on the basis of sex for all women and girls of all ages and assure women of all ages equal rights and their full enjoyment.”

For over a century, women have been calling for equality in the Constitution in the form of the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA). This constitutional amendment was first drafted in 1923, and seeks to guarantee equal rights and legal protections in the US under the law, regardless of sex or gender. It also specifically prohibits discrimination on this basis. The amendment succinctly states: “Equality of rights under the law shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of sex.”

Most Americans are unaware that the human rights of women and girls are not secured in the US Constitution, despite the impacts being life-changing and wide-ranging. Girls are disproportionately affected by the absence of a solid legal foundation to challenge and combat harmful cultural practices such as child marriage, which remains legal in 37 states. Over 300,000 minors – some as young as ten years old – were married in the US between 2010 to 2018. Girls account for 86% of these minors, with most wed to adult men. And while at least 513,000 women and girls are living with or at risk of female genital mutilation, nine US states and the District of Columbia do not have laws prohibiting FGM. Of those that do have laws banning it, many do not outlaw girls being taken out of state to be cut.

Women are more likely to live in poverty and economic insecurity, partly due to the lack of constitutional safeguards. This dearth makes it harder to defend laws that uphold women’s rights when attacked, and there is less protection against workplace discrimination based on gender, pregnancy, or parental status. In cases involving violations in hiring, remuneration, promotion, and retention practices, legal protections and mechanisms for recourse are insufficient, making it more difficult for victims to access justice. These issues have become much more important in the last 60 days.

Unfortunately, women are overrepresented in insecure, low-paid, unregulated jobs. This is reflected in the country’s gender pay gap, with women’s wages lower on average compared to their male counterparts. Analysis by the US Department of Labor found that women typically earn 84% of what men were paid.

Without explicit constitutional equality, US courts and legislatures have failed to adequately address systematic inequalities, undermining efforts to realize the Platform’s objectives across areas such as combating violence against women, addressing economic inequality, and ensuring access to reproductive healthcare. The US also remains one of only 6 countries that have not ratified the Convention on Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW), which is a comprehensive treaty advancing women’s human rights. The Equal Rights Amendment, if comprehensively implemented, has the potential to be transformative. It would create additional avenues of legal recourse for people who face sex discrimination and ensure that courts apply a more demanding level of judicial review. The ERA also gives Congress more power to enact laws that ensure better legal protections against discrimination, sexual assault, and domestic violence, and provide a stronger legal foundation for state laws relating to women and girls.

Many systemic issues affecting women and girls could be remedied with the adoption of the ERA. It would add explicit prohibition on sex-based discrimination at the highest level, directly impacting the rights of all women and girls in all their diversity. Since the ERA was proposed over 100 years ago, it has met all the legal requirements for its adoption. However, despite decades of advocacy, the US Government has refused to recognize it as the 28th amendment to the Constitution.

Eleanor Smeal pointed out that 85% of constitutions around the world have constitutional equality, but not the US. Constitutional equality is the key to economic justice. If there is no guarantee in the constitution, every right for women can be rolled back. It is happening already in the US.

The ERA was ratified by the requisite number of states in 2020, but the US government is refusing to recognize this. The current administration is also refusing to recognize the Biden administration proclamation made on January 17, 2025.

The panelists made it clear that Article 5 of the US Constitution does not have a time limit. Accordingly, the time limit set by Congress was arbitrary, meaning that that the Amendment stands.

On a positive note, 28 states have approved state level ERAs, and the number seems to be growing to include age and gender identification. Based on this, we need to really look at each state’s allocation of resources to ensure that women’s programs are receiving the same funding as men’s programs. The potential impact of the federal Equal Rights Amendment can already be seen in the results these state-level Equal Rights Amendments. Cases in Pennsylvania and Nevada have highlighted how constitutional sex equality can serve as a gateway to securing the rights of women and girls.

On the 30th Anniversary of the Beijing Platform for Action, the incorporation of the ERA into the US Constitution represents a critical path for the United States to fulfill its longstanding commitments to gender equality. By effectively implementing the ERA, the US can meet its commitments under the Platform and create a foundation for realizing the full spectrum of women and girls’ rights.

What can we do to ensure that the ERA is recognized as ratified? We need to have attorneys and reputable attorney groups issue opinions that the ERA is ratified and inform and engage the media and public. There are many legal opinions on point.