BY REBECCA DE WOLF / HISTORY NEWS NETWORK MAY 12, 2021 12:15 PM EDT
This post is in partnership with the History News Network, the website that puts the news into historical perspective. A version of the article below was originally published at HNN.
The fight over the Equal Rights Amendment is often framed as a classic fight between liberals and conservatives with liberals supporting the amendment to ensure gender equality and conservatives opposing the amendment to preserve traditional gender roles. But the history of the ERA before the state ratification battles of the 1970s shows that the fight over complete constitutional sexual equality did not always fall along strict political boundaries.
