The Equal Rights Amendment (ERA) was first proposed in 1923 by suffragist Alice Paul as an amendment to the United States Constitution to prohibit discrimination on the basis of sex.
It was passed by the House of Representatives in 1971 and the Senate in 1972.
To be certified, 38 states were required to ratify it, and Congress implemented a seven-year deadline for the ratification to take place.
[1] The deadline was extended to 1982, but only 35 of the 38 states ratified it.
It was then ratified by Nevada in 2017, Illinois in 2018, and Virginia in 2020.