ERA

The Equal Rights Amendment (ERA) was a proposed amendment to the United States Constitution which was intended to guarantee that equal rights under any federal, state, or local law could not be denied on account of sex. The ERA was originally written by Alice Paul. In 1972, it passed both houses of Congress, but failed to gain ratification before its June 30, 1982 deadline.
Although the Nineteenth Amendment had prohibited the denial of the right to vote because of a person's sex, Alice Paul, a suffragette leader, argued that this right alone would not end remaining vestiges of legal discrimination based upon sex.