Equal Rights Amendment

The Equal Rights Amendment, first proposed in 1923, would guarantee equality of rights under the law for all regardless of sex. The ERA passed Congress in 1972 with the needed two-thirds vote of the U.S. House and Senate. The required three-fourths of the state legislatures then ratified the ERA when Virginia became the 38th state to ratify in 2020. It still has not been added to the Constitution.

The People’s Bill of Rights 250 Invites Americans to Reimagine the Constitution

PUBLISHED 7/29/2026 by , and

A new online public platform—The People’s Bill of Rights 250—invites Americans to propose, discuss and vote on ideas they believe belong in the Constitution. As the U.S. marks 250 years, the bold, interactive project asks Americans not only to reflect on the nation’s founding, but to help shape its future.

The nonpartisan organization The People and executive director Katie Fahey, alongside a coalition of civic, advocacy and cultural leaders, spearheaded the People’s Bill of Rights 250. It invites Americans to answer a simple question: What freedoms, rights and protections should every person in the country be guaranteed over the next 250 years?  

From now until Friday, July 31, Americans are encouraged to vote and share their own ideas at the People’s Bill of Rights 250’s website.

The Equal Rights Amendment and the First Amendment: A Roadmap for a Feminist Future

PUBLISHED 7/1/2026 by

Donald Trump’s jingoistic whitewashing of the 250th anniversary of the founding of our country will no doubt celebrate the 1773 Boston Tea Party, where the Sons of Liberty protested oppressive British import taxes. But throughout American history, women activists—the Daughters of Liberty to suffragists, journalists and civil rights advocates—have been making patriarchal governments tremble, by taking full advantage of the precious rights protected by the First Amendment: freedom of speech, freedom of the press, the right to peaceably assemble, and the right to petition the government for redress of grievances. 

That same spirit must now drive the final push to secure the Equal Rights Amendment. Although the ERA has been ratified by the required 38 states, it has yet to be officially recognized as part of the Constitution.

The First Amendment gives us the tools to change that: by speaking out, organizing, protesting and demanding that elected leaders make constitutional equality a national priority.

Democratizing America’s Lawmaking Institutions: Why Feminists Should Stop Waiting for Congress and the Court

PUBLISHED 6/18/2026 by

A feminist pro-democracy agenda must include new lawmaking institutions that can ensure our democracy is more inclusive, more democratic, more representative, and more responsive to the needs of all the people who call America home.

The past decade has brought two major failures of existing institutions to establish the basic requirements of non-patriarchal democracy: Congress’ failure to add the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA) to the U.S. Constitution and the Supreme Court’s failure to guard women’s constitutional right to control their reproductive lives. After calling out these outrages and trying to reverse them for years, it’s time for feminists to confront the deeper causes of these failures: the dysfunctional lawmaking institutions that were created by the Constitution over 200 years ago to govern the nation.

(This is part of a new miniseries FEMINIST 250: Democracy’s Feminist Future, a special Ms. series examining the next chapter of American democracy through a feminist lens. As the nation approaches its 250th anniversary, the series explores how women and marginalized communities have shaped democratic progress, what lessons history offers for the challenges ahead, and how a more inclusive, representative and equitable democracy can be built for the next 250 years.)

Feminist Lessons from the 2010s: When Millions Refused to Go Back, Feminists Turned Backlash Into Power

PUBLISHED 6/9/2026 by

The 2010s began with a burst of feminist victories that seemed to signal a new era.

Barack Obama signed the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act, appointed Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan to the Supreme Court, and signed the Affordable Care Act into law. For millions of women, the ACA transformed healthcare almost overnight: Insurers could no longer charge women more than men, deny coverage because of a previous C-section or experience of domestic violence, or exclude maternity care. Contraception, well-woman visits, breastfeeding support and other preventive services became available without out-of-pocket costs, saving women billions of dollars.

Meanwhile, the administration strengthened protections for survivors of sexual assault, expanded support for Indigenous, immigrant and LGBTQ survivors of violence, and advanced women’s rights globally.

But beneath those gains, another story was unfolding. State lawmakers introduced hundreds of abortion restrictions, anti-choice politicians targeted contraception and family planning programs, and Republicans repeatedly attacked the very policies feminists had fought to secure.

Then came the political earthquake of 2016. Hillary Clinton became the first woman nominated for president by a major political party, only to lose to Donald Trump after one of the most openly misogynistic campaigns in modern history.

Within months, Trump reinstated the global gag rule, undermined reproductive healthcare programs, rolled back Title IX protections and began reshaping the federal judiciary with far-right judges whose influence would last for decades.

Yet the defining story of the decade was not the backlash itself—it was the response. Nearly 6 million people joined Women’s Marches in 2017, making them the largest single-day protest in U.S. history at the time. Survivors launched the #MeToo movement into a global reckoning over sexual harassment and abuse. Women flipped 40 House seats in the 2018 midterms, revived the Equal Rights Amendment campaign and elected record numbers of women to office.

The lesson of the 2010s is that backlash can become fuel. Faced with escalating attacks on their rights, millions of feminists refused to go back—and instead transformed resistance into political power.

This essay is part of Feminist Lessons—part 2 of Ms.’ our three-part FEMINIST 250 project—which explores what each decade of modern feminist history can teach us about power, democracy, backlash and social change.

A (Brief) History of Women’s Rights, 1600 to Present

PUBLISHED 6/3/2026 by and

From the Haudenosaunee women who successfully challenged warfare in the 17th century, to today’s feminist organizers defending democracy, reproductive freedom and civil rights, the struggle for women’s equality has never been a straight line. It is a story of persistence, resistance and collective action spanning centuries.

Compiled by editors at Ms. and researchers from the National Women’s History Alliance, this women’s history timeline traces the interconnected histories of feminism, abolition, labor organizing, civil rights, reproductive justice, LGBTQ+ liberation and democratic participation.

No timeline can fully capture more than 400 years of feminist history, let alone every movement, leader, victory and setback that has shaped the ongoing fight for equality. Rather than offering a comprehensive account, this chronology highlights pivotal moments and turning points that help tell the story of how women have expanded the boundaries of freedom, democracy and human rights in the United States and beyond.

The timeline is part of Ms. magazine’s FEMINIST 250: Founding Feminists project, a multimedia essay series marking the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence by examining the women and feminist movements that have worked to make the nation’s founding promises more fully realized. Through reported features, essays, interviews and historical analysis, FEMINIST 250 explores not only where we have been, but where we must go next to achieve true equality.

FEMINIST 250’s Parts 2 and 3—Feminist Lessons and Feminist Futures—drop this month on MsMagazine.com.

Driving the Vote for Equality: ERA Dispatches From Arizona and California

PUBLISHED 5/18/2026 by

More than a century after suffragists Alice Burke and Nell Richardson launched their 1916 cross-country campaign for women’s voting rights, the modern Driving the Vote for Equality tour is again carrying the fight for constitutional equality across America.

This month, the Golden Flyer II traveled through Arizona and California—places shaped by immigration, labor struggles, border politics and widening political divides.

In Phoenix and Tucson, speakers emphasized that the ERA is not some abstract constitutional debate disconnected from everyday life, but something women and marginalized communities can rely on: equal protection under the law at a moment when hard-fought rights increasingly feel precarious.

When the Golden Flyer II rolled up to the offices of Ms. magazine in Los Angeles, advocates, lawmakers and supporters gathered around the bright yellow roadster to connect the unfinished work of suffrage to today’s political landscape. Carolyn Maloney warned that women’s rights are being “bulldozed over” through attacks on abortion access, voting rights and equal employment protections, while Rep. Maxine Waters urged activists to “keep pushing” Congress to recognize the ERA as the 28th Amendment.

Again and again, participants returned to the same conclusion: Progress has never arrived easily. It has always been built through years of grassroots organizing, coalition-building and persistence in the face of backlash.

The tour heads next to Chicago, South Bend and Lansing.

The Supreme Court Is Showing Us Why the ERA Can’t Wait

PUBLISHED 5/1/2026 by

Listening to two recent Supreme Court arguments on immigration, I heard something more than a debate over statutory language or constitutional text. I heard a stark illustration of how precarious rights can be when they depend on interpretation rather than being firmly embedded in the Constitution.

In one case, justices parsed the meaning of a single word—“arrives”—in ways that risked erasing access to asylum altogether. In the other, they confronted a direct challenge to the 14th Amendment and, in doing so, were forced to reckon with the real lives at stake.

That contrast is the point. When a right lives in statute, it can be narrowed, redefined or even functionally denied through legal gymnastics that separate words from their purpose. But when a right is written into the Constitution, it becomes harder—though not impossible—for courts to ignore its human consequences.

The difference isn’t abstract; it shapes whether people can seek refuge, claim citizenship or be recognized as equal under the law.

Taken together, these cases offer a warning—and a roadmap. If we want rights to endure, they must be grounded where they are hardest to dismantle. The Equal Rights Amendment was meant to do exactly that. And in this moment, as courts and lawmakers test the limits of existing protections, the case for finally enshrining it in the Constitution has never been clearer.

From Pennsylvania to Illinois to California: A Wave of Good News for Women

PUBLISHED 4/24/2026 by

It is a relief to point to bona fide good news coming from the states, often some of the best laboratories for democracy.

In Pennsylvania, an appeals court struck down a decades-old law banning the use of state Medicaid funding to cover abortion. Truly remarkable is the majority’s decree that reproductive autonomy is enshrined in the equal protection provision of the Pennsylvania Constitution, guaranteed under its Equal Rights Amendment. ERAs can be game-changing for bolstering legal protection against a wide array of discrimination—including on the basis of pregnancy, age, disability, and immigration status—as well as for addressing adjacent issues such as pay equity and transparency and gender-based violence.

Upcoming judicial elections in Georgia are fast becoming a reproductive rights referendum, as happened last year in Wisconsin. Activists are raising funds in force. 

Idaho voters will likely get to weigh in directly on abortion rights in the November midterms.

… and more.

The Abolitionist Origins of American Feminism

PUBLISHED 4/2/2026 by

From Mary Wollstonecraft to Sojourner Truth, the fight for women’s rights emerged alongside—and was fundamentally shaped by—the struggle to abolish slavery and secure universal human rights.

On the 250th anniversary of the founding of the republic, it is timely to trace the history of American feminism, whose roots lie in the revolutionary era and are inextricably bound with the movement to abolish slavery. 

(This essay is part of the FEMINIST 250: Founding Feminists series, marking the 250th anniversary of America by reclaiming the revolution through the women and gender-expansive people whose ideas, labor and resistance shaped U.S. democracy.)

ERA Road Tour Rolls Through Texas, Linking Suffrage History to Today’s Fight to Enshrine Equality in the Constitution

PUBLISHED 3/31/2026 by

The Driving the Vote for Equality Tour is a cross-country campaign retracing the 1916 suffrage road trip, when activists drove across the United States to demand voting rights for women—this time calling on Congress to recognize the Equal Rights Amendment as the 28th Amendment. Traveling in a restored 1914 Saxon car known as the Golden Flyer II, organizers are connecting past and present while gathering support nationwide.

This week’s installment highlights recent stops in Houston, Seguin and Georgetown, Texas.