One Hundred Years of Fighting

One Hundred Years of Fighting argues that for a century the Equal Rights Amendment has been highly contested, divisive among women, and symbolic of drastic social change and an expansion of government power. In the 1970s, women of the Old Right joined with women of the New Right to defeat the ERA, using the novel method of rescission to defend tradition. Contrary to the standard portrait of the ERA as coming very close to being ratified (needing only three more states), One Hundred Years of Fighting shows that the ERA was never a settled issue in majority of the states that ratified it. In an era marked by bewildering social change and a sense of national decline, many people yearned for a return to tradition and what was familiar. The ERA was in some ways a casualty of the mood of the decade and a conservatism that had a growing appeal to mainstream voters. Much like the rightward direction in which voters took the country in the 1980s, the rejection of the ERA through rescission could be seen as democracy in action: distressing to those who did not agree, thrilling to those who did, and a messy and befuddling process to many in the middle.