This blog post was written by former graduate assistant Aaron Ramos.
In today’s political climate, thinking about history through a lens of women’s/gender studies is bound to attract criticism from pundits who claim that this lens of academic inquiry seeks to upset traditional gender roles and needlessly politicize that which seems apolitical. It is true that one aspect of women’s/gender studies seeks to examine how and why people experience oppression on the basis of gender. However, many historians have been able to highlight how the stories of women who seek to affirm and uphold traditional gender roles are a key component of women’s history. Furthermore, these historians have shown that just like their liberal counterparts, the personal is also politicized for conservative women. The Poage Library highlights this phenomenon through documents that show us how women from across the political spectrum felt about the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA) in Texas.
“Ladies! Have You Heard?” Donald G. Adams papers, Accession #33, Box #45, Folder #1, Baylor Collections of Political Materials, W. R. Poage Library, Baylor University.
Instantly distinguishable with its blue font on pink paper, this “Ladies! Have You Heard?” flyer was distributed by Women Who Want to be Women (WWWW) to people across the United States. WWWW was a conservative women’s advocacy group founded in Fort Worth, Texas in 1974. Their goal in distributing the “Ladies! Have You Heard?” flyer was to galvanize the American public against the proposed Equal Rights Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. WWWW is just one example of Texan-grown resistance to the ERA. BCPM houses numerous letters that individual women in Texas wrote to their elected officials regarding the ERA.
Even after the ERA was ratified in Texas in 1972, countless women wrote to their elected officials calling for them to rescind its ratification. Mrs. James N. Wall of San Augustine, Texas wrote to Representative Don Adams that the ERA was “dedicated to the destruction of the family and the hard-earned protection that women have gained through the law.”[i] Mrs. Harry McDonald of Tenaha, Texas wrote that the ERA would bring harm that was “far more tragic than we need to witness.”[ii]
Two letters written by Texas women in opposition to the ERA. (left) Mrs. Harry McDonald. Letter to Don Adams. Donald G. Adams Papers, Accession 33, Box 45, Folder 2, The Baylor Collections of Political Materials, W. R. Poage Legislative Library, Baylor University. (right) Mrs. James N. Wall. Letter to Don Adams. Donald G. Adams Papers, Accession 33, Box 17, Folder 7, The Baylor Collections of Political Materials, W. R. Poage Legislative Library, Baylor University.
What was the ERA, and why would women be opposed to something that promised equal treatment under the law? This proposed amendment to the Constitution would have prohibited all discrimination on the basis of sex in the United States. There would no longer be legal distinctions between men and women. Supporters of the ERA argued that its ratification would allow women greater economic independence, because under this amendment, employment opportunities and child support expectations would no longer be constructed around gendered lines. By June 30, 1982, the Equal Rights Amendment had been ratified in thirty-five states including Texas, California, New York, and Alaska. It also enjoyed bi-partisan support from Democrats and Republicans, including Richard Nixon, Lisa Murkowski, John F. Kennedy, and others. Ronald Reagan voiced his initial support for the ERA before he reversed his stance in the 1980s.
Scholars such as Kristin Kobes Du Mez and Emily Suzanne Johnson have proposed several reasons to explain why women would be so vehemently opposed to the ERA. In Johnson’s book This Is Our Message: Women’s Leadership in the New Christian Right, she posits that many American women did not resonate with the ERA or other efforts to advance women’s rights, because they felt that this type of activism denigrated their roles as stay-at-home wives/mothers and their identities as Christian women.[iii] Du Mez, in her book Jesus and John Wayne: How White Evangelicals Corrupted a Faith and Fractured a Nation, locates women’s dissatisfaction with women’s liberation in post-World War II American society. With the post-war economic boom, men returning from service overseas reentered a workforce that had been bolstered by female labor during the war. With men back at work, the cultural expectation was that women would stay home and tend to the affairs of the domestic sphere. As such, women who came of age in the years following the war grew up in a society that situated the ideal woman within the home. The generation of women who came of age in the years following the war by and large began their adult lives with few skills that could help them in the workforce.[iv] Women feared the employment aspect of the ERA precisely because their economic security was rooted in their roles as housewives and mothers.
Connected to this fear of departing from the domestic realm, Du Mez cites what some critics believed would contribute to the “Soviet-ization” of the United States: public daycare. With children being cared for at state-run daycare centers, some women feared that they would not be able to contribute to the moral development of their children.[v] Johnson highlights similar concerns in This Is Our Message, wherein she cites evangelical author and activist Beverly LaHaye, who stated that she was in favor of equal pay for women, however she understood the ERA to be a “cleverly disguised tool” that would enable total government control over the lives of Americans.[vi]
Image of Beverly LaHaye’s 1993 book The Desires of a Woman’s Heart: Encouragement for Women When Traditional Values are Challenged. LaHaye was a noted author, speaker, and activist who founded and led Concerned Women for America (CWA). Image accessed from: https://www.amazon.com/Desires-Womans-Heart-Encouragement-Traditional/dp/0842379452.
Some American women also feared the potential implications of the ERA within the realm of military service. After all, the Vietnam War was well situated within the general consciousness of the nation. Critics stated that the passage of the ERA would result in women being drafted alongside men, which would result in the spread of venereal disease among America’s troops and the sexual assault of conscripted women.[vii]
The ERA sparked such a flurry of fear and misinformation that Family Circle, advertised as the world’s largest women’s magazine, published “10 Myths About the Equal Rights Amendment” to combat the spread of misinformation. State legislators such as Lane Denton received copies of this article from Family Circle and circulated it to concerned constituents who wrote his office to voice their concerns over the ERA.
Below is a summary of some of the debunked “myths” provided in the Family Circle article:
The MYTH: The ERA will exempt a husband from providing financially for his wife and children, and force stay-at-home wives/mothers to enter the workforce.
The MYTH debunked: In reality, all states possessed laws on the books that required a man to provide for his family. Stay-at-home mothers would also not be forced to enter the workforce. Under the ERA, spouses would not be required to contribute equally to the economic survival of the family unit. Spousal support would be defined in functional terms based on a spouses’ earning power alongside non-monetary contributions to family life (ie: the work of a stay-at-home mother).[viii]
The MYTH: The ERA would require women to be drafted alongside men.
The MYTH debunked: The matter of women being drafted was not a myth. At the time of its passing, there was no active draft in the United States. However, the article argued that if military service was an obligation of citizenship, then it should apply to all Americans equally. In short, American women “could not have equal rights without equal responsibilities.” A report released by Texans for ERA read that Congress has always had the power to conscript women, and nearly did so during the Second World War. Furthermore, the Constitution affirmed Congress’ power to raise an army, and there was nothing in the text that excluded women from this. Under the ERA, women would have access to deferments and conscientious objections just as men do. Nor would women be forced to share barracks with male soldiers. Constitutional rights to privacy would grant women their own quarters as well.[ix]
The MYTH: The ERA would invalidate rape, anti-prostitution and anti sodomy laws.
The MYTH debunked: The ERA would revise these laws to ensure they are applied equally to men and women regardless of marital status.
The MYTH: The ERA would legalize marriage for gay and lesbian couples and permit them to adopt children.
The MYTH debunked: In a report released by Texans for Equal Rights Amendment, the ERA would have no impact on homosexuality in American culture and society. The authors of the report stated that the panic over homosexuality stemmed from a misunderstanding of the word “sex” in the context of the amendment. The amendment did not call for equality on the basis of sexual behavior. It called for the equal application of the law between men and women.[x] Moreover, a gay couple would not adopt a child until 1979, and gay marriage would not become the law of the land until Obergefell v. Hodges in 2015.[xi]
Despite efforts to quell the spread of misinformation and soften the American public’s perceptions surrounding the ERA, several conservative women and organizations became hyper-visible in American politics and culture to advocate against the ERA. These include Catholic anti-abortion activist Phylis Schlafly, author Beverly LaHaye, the National Council of Catholic Women, the Southern Baptist Association, the National Association of Orthodox Rabbis, and the Daughters of the American Revolution.[xii] A commonality among many of those who opposed the ERA was that they believed the proponents of the amendment were a “noisy minority” who claimed to speak on behalf of the majority of the country.
Image of religious women participating in the 2018 Women’s March, showing that religious women in America occupy a variety of spaces on the nation’s political spectrum. Image accessed from: https://www.npr.org/2018/01/20/579441219/womens-march-on-washington-we-are-a-part-of-america-so-we-need-to-be-out-here.
In the late 2010s and 2020s, with the rise of the #MeToo Movement and increasing interest in women’s rights globally, the ERA has received renewed interest in the United States after decades of inactivity. As of 2025, the Constitution of the United States has not been amended to include the ERA even though in 2020, Virginia became the 38th state to ratify the ERA, which put the amendment at the necessary threshold of 78% of the states to officially amend the Constitution. For an amendment to be ratified, it must receive a 2/3 majority vote from the House of Representatives and the Senate. From there, the Archivist of the United States submits the proposed amendment to the governor of each state who sends the amendment to their state’s legislature. Once a state approves or denies the proposed amendment, they send certified records of their decision to the Office of Federal Registry, who retains their records until the amendment is adopted or fails.[xiii]
Nevertheless, states reserve the right to rescind their ratification of the amendment. However, the Archivist of the United States, under a 1984 law, is charged with issuing a formal certification after three-fourths of the states have ratified the amendment.[xiv] Nevertheless, former archivist Colleen Joy Shogan did not issue any certification for the amendment due to “established legal, judicial, and procedural decisions.”[xv] Even so, in his final days in office, President Joe Biden declared that the ERA was the law of the land. In an Instagram post, Biden stated: “I’m affirming what I have long believed and what three-fourths of the states have ratified: The 28th Amendment is the law of the land, guaranteeing all Americans equal rights and protections under the law regardless of their sex.”[xvi] In the same post, Biden stated that he had been a supporter of the ERA for 50 years, dating back to his early days as a senator from Delaware in 1974.
Do women’s history and topics like the ERA interest you? Come visit us and see what you can uncover in our archive! Email us at bcpm@baylor.edu.
[i] Mrs. Harry McDonald. Letter to Don Adams. Donald G. Adams Papers, Accession 33, Box 45, Folder 2, The Baylor Collections of Political Materials, W. R. Poage Legislative Library, Baylor University.
[ii] Mrs. James N. Wall. Letter to Don Adams. Donald G. Adams Papers, Accession 33, Box 17, Folder 7, The Baylor Collections of Political Materials, W. R. Poage Legislative Library, Baylor University.
[iii] Johnson, Emily Suzanne. This Is Our Message. Oxford: Oxford University Press, Incorporated, 2019. Accessed January 13, 2025. ProQuest Ebook Central.
[iv] Du Mez, Kristin Kobes. Jesus and John Wayne: How White Evangelicals Corrupted a Faith and Fractured a Nation. First edition. New York, NY: Liveright Publishing Corporation, a division of W.W. Norton & Company, 2020.
[v] Du Mez, Kristin Kobes. Jesus and John Wayne: How White Evangelicals Corrupted a Faith and Fractured a Nation. First edition. New York, NY: Liveright Publishing Corporation, a division of W.W. Norton & Company, 2020.
[vi] Johnson, Emily Suzanne. This Is Our Message. Oxford: Oxford University Press, Incorporated, 2019. Accessed January 13, 2025. ProQuest Ebook Central.
[vii] “Equal Rights in Action-the Effect on Men.” Women Who Want to Be Women. Donald G. Adams Papers, Accession 33, Box 45, Folder 5, The Baylor Collections of Political Materials, W. R. Poage Legislative Library, Baylor University.
[viii] Donald G. Adams Papers, Accession 33, Box 45, Folder 4, The Baylor Collections of Political Materials, W. R. Poage Legislative Library, Baylor University.
[ix] Donald G. Adams Papers, Accession 33, Box 45, Folder 4, The Baylor Collections of Political Materials, W. R. Poage Legislative Library, Baylor University.
[x] Donald G. Adams Papers, Accession 33, Box 45, Folder 4, The Baylor Collections of Political Materials, W. R. Poage Legislative Library, Baylor University.
[xi] https://www.get-carrot.com/blog/milestones-in-lgbtq-parenting-history#:~:text=1979%3A%20A%20gay%20couple%20in,LGBTQ%2B%20parents%20and%20their%20children.
[xii] “Who Opposes the ERA??” Lane Denton papers, Accession 112, Baylor Collections of Political Materials, W. R. Poage Legislative Library, Baylor University.
[xiii] “Constitutional Amendment Process.” Office of the Federal Register, National Archives and Records Administration. https://www.archives.gov/federal-register/constitution.
[xiv] https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/research-reports/equal-rights-amendment-explained.
[xv] https://www.archives.gov/press/press-releases/2025/nr25-004.
[xvi] Biden, Joe (@potus46archive). 2025. “Today I’m affirming what I have long believed and what three-fourths of the states have ratified…” Instagram, January 17, 2025. https://www.instagram.com/accounts/login/?next=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.instagram.com%2Fpotus46archive%2F&is_from_rle.