The Feminist Movement in the 20th Century - Mary Frances Berry (Essay Date 1986)
MARY FRANCES BERRY (ESSAY DATE 1986)
SOURCE: Berry, Mary Frances. “Legal Developments in the Courts and in the States: The Brooding Omnipresence of ERA.” In Why ERA Failed: Politics, Women’s Rights, and the Amending Process of the Constitution, pp. 86-100. Bloomington, Ind.: Indiana University Press, 1986.
In the following essay, Berry charts the progress of Equal Rights Amendment ratification in various states, noting that pro-women judicial decisions actually detracted from the perceived need for the Equal Rights Amendment.
Despite its failure, the campaign for ERA’s ratification stimulated significant alteration in the legal status of women. Brown, Emerson, Falk, and Freedmen in the influential 1971 Yale Law Review article widely used in the congressional debates preceding the passage of ERA, predicted that “any present hope for large-scale change can hardly be deemed realistic” if...
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