Legislative Background on Gender Equality
Recent Action in the Congress on ERA Ratification
Article V Constitution requires that an amendment must be ratified by three-fourths of the States to become part of that document but contains no time limits for ratification, and most proposed amendments do not specify one. For example, the Nineteenth Amendment, granting women to right to vote, did not have a time limit and took 72 years to ratify. The Twenty-Seventh Amendment, which says that congressional pay raises cannot take effect until the following session (i.e., after an election), was ratified 203 years after it was proposed. In the case of the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA), however, which was approved…
