The Connecticut Council of Catholic Women petitioned Congress in protest of the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA). Voicing concern for the nation’s nearly 12 million women industrial workers, they argued that the ERA would invalidate such hard-won special protections as mother’s compensation and limitation of women’s work hours, unless men received the same benefits.
It has taken years to obtain legislation which will offer the right protection to women workers…With the passage of this measure all of this legislation will be invalidated unless there is similar legislation for men.
Records of the U.S. House of Representatives, National Archives and Records Administration
Petition against ERA, Diocesan Bureau of Social Service, Hartford, Connecticut, February 4, 1924
Equal Rights for Women
After the Nineteenth Amendment secured women’s voting rights in 1920, suffragist Alice Paul drafted the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA) to guarantee women’s full legal equality. Introduced in every Congress from 1923 to 1972, the ERA was repeatedly stymied in committee. Its opponents feared loss of special protections for women and resisted increasing federal authority. In 1970 Representative Martha Griffiths of Michigan got the ERA discharged from committee. Slightly revised, the amendment passed both houses in 1972 but failed ratification by the required number of states and was never adopted.
The Connecticut Council of Catholic Women petitioned Congress in protest of the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA). Voicing concern for the nation’s nearly 12 million women industrial workers, they argued that the ERA would invalidate such hard-won special protections as mother’s compensation and limitation of women’s work hours, unless men received the same benefits.
It has taken years to obtain legislation which will offer the right protection to women workers…With the passage of this measure all of this legislation will be invalidated unless there is similar legislation for men.
Records of the U.S. House of Representatives, National Archives and Records Administration
