Does the Success of the Women’s March Mean that it’s Time to Revive the ERA?
Two North Carolina legislators have introduced a bill that would result in the state’s belated ratification of the federal Equal Rights Amendment. It’s an uphill battle, they acknowledge, but they are buoyed by the energy that brought millions out to women’s marches around the country in January.
By some accounts, the federal ERA effort died in 1982 when it fell just three states short of the 38 needed for ratification within the specified time period. Some legal scholars, however, argue that there is no constitutional time clock for ratification, and that even today, three more state ratifications would be sufficient to amend the US constitution to add the ERA. North Carolina was one of 15 states that refused to ratify in the 1970s. If it reversed course and ratified now, just two more states would be required to activate the ERA.
Even if you’re skeptical about the ERA extension argument, it’s clear that the ERA — and CEDAW — are among the most effective frameworks for channeling the energy of the women’s marches. Yes, there are important and difficult battles along the way: fair and equal pay, freedom from violence, and fairness in healthcare all come to mind. But while activists are fighting for these rights, the larger frames of the ERA and CEDAW provide a common platform that amplifies activists’ work on all of these fronts, and that connects activists across issues.
The growing energy around the Cities for CEDAW campaign is a case in point. San Francisco has shown how the CEDAW framework can be used to address subtle sex discrimination on the city level across a range of substantive areas. The list of Cities for CEDAW is growing, and next up may be Durham, North Carolina, where the Durham Local to Global Women’s Forum will be held on February 23, 2017. More information is available here. In North Carolina’s Research Triangle, fairness for women in the sciences has particular salience. By including this effort within the CEDAW frame, North Carolina’s women’s rights activists ensure that their work has resonance for all of those in the state who are fighting for equality — including the two state legislators who are pushing for ERA ratification.
The ERA and CEDAW both provide broad frameworks for action. But do we have to choose one or the other? Both would elevate and expand women’s human rights in the US. In one of my first encounters with the UN system, I participated in shadow reporting on US compliance with the ICCPR. When the US representative finally appeared before the UN Human Rights Committee, he (or course, he) was asked, not about CEDAW, but about the ERA: shouldn’t the US adopt the ERA in order to come into compliance with the ICCPR? The representative fumbled for an answer and came up with something about the Equal Protection clause as an adequate substitute. But more than twenty years later, the right answer is still the same: Yes, to the ERA. And yes to CEDAW.