title: Psychokinesis

text: Philosopher and physicist Mario Bunge has written that "psychokinesis, or PK, violates the principle that mind cannot act directly on matter. (If it did, no experimenter could trust his readings of measuring instruments.) It also violates the principles of conservation of energy and momentum. The claim that quantum mechanics allows for the possibility of mental power influencing randomizers—an alleged case of micro-PK—is ludicrous since that theory respects the said conservation principles, and it deals exclusively with physical things."


title: Psychokinesis

text: Physicist John Taylor, who has investigated parapsychological claims, has written that an unknown fifth force causing psychokinesis would have to transmit a great deal of energy. The energy would have to overcome the electromagnetic forces binding the atoms together, because the atoms would need to respond more strongly to the fifth force than to electric forces. Such an additional force between atoms should therefore exist all the time and not during only alleged paranormal occurrences. Taylor wrote there is no scientific trace of such a force in physics, down to many orders of magnitude; thus, if a scientific viewpoint is to be preserved, the idea of any fifth force must be discarded. Taylor concluded that there is no possible physical mechanism for psychokinesis, and it is in complete contradiction to established science.


title: Psychokinesis

text: In 1979, Evan Harris Walker and Richard Mattuck published a parapsychology paper proposing a quantum explanation for psychokinesis. Physicist Victor J. Stenger wrote that their explanation contained assumptions not supported by any scientific evidence. According to Stenger their paper is "filled with impressive looking equations and calculations that give the appearance of placing psychokinesis on a firm scientific footing... Yet look what they have done. They have found the value of one unknown number (wavefunction steps) that gives one measured number (the supposed speed of PK-induced motion). This is numerology, not science."


title: Psychokinesis

text: Physicist Sean M. Carroll has written that spoons, like all matter, are made up of atoms and that any movement of a spoon with the mind would involve the manipulation of those atoms through the four forces of nature: the strong nuclear force, the weak nuclear force, electromagnetism, and gravitation. Psychokinesis would have to be either some form of one of these four forces, or a new force that has a billionth the strength of gravity, for otherwise it would have been captured in experiments already done. This leaves no physical force that could possibly account for psychokinesis.


title: Psychokinesis

text: Physicist Robert L. Park has found it suspicious that a phenomenon should only ever appear at the limits of detectability of questionable statistical techniques. He cites this feature as one of Irving Langmuir's indicators of pathological science. Park pointed out that if mind really could influence matter, it would be easy for parapsychologists to measure such a phenomenon by using the alleged psychokinetic power to deflect a microbalance, which would not require any dubious statistics. "[T]he reason, of course, is that the microbalance stubbornly refuses to budge." He has suggested that the reason statistical studies are so popular in parapsychology is that they introduce opportunities for uncertainty and error, which are used to support the experimenter's biases.


title: Psychokinesis

text: Cognitive bias research has suggested that people are susceptible to illusions of PK. These include both the illusion that they themselves have the power, and that the events they witness are real demonstrations of PK. For example, the illusion of control is an illusory correlation between intention and external events, and believers in the paranormal have been shown to be more susceptible to this illusion than others. Psychologist Thomas Gilovich explains this as a biased interpretation of personal experience. For example, someone in a dice game wishing for a high score can interpret high numbers as "success" and low numbers as "not enough concentration." Bias towards belief in PK may be an example of the human tendency to see patterns where none exist, called the clustering illusion, which believers are also more susceptible to.


title: Psychokinesis

text: A 1952 study tested for experimenter's bias with respect to psychokinesis. Richard Kaufman of Yale University gave subjects the task of trying to influence eight dice and allowed them to record their own scores. They were secretly filmed, so their records could be checked for errors. Believers in psychokinesis made errors that favored its existence, while disbelievers made opposite errors. A similar pattern of errors was found in J. B. Rhine's dice experiments, which were considered the strongest evidence for PK at that time.


title: Psychokinesis

text: In 1995, Wiseman and Morris showed subjects an unedited videotape of a magician's performance in which a fork bent and eventually broke. Believers in the paranormal were significantly more likely to misinterpret the tape as a demonstration of PK, and were more likely to misremember crucial details of the presentation. This suggests that confirmation bias affects people's interpretation of PK demonstrations. Psychologist Robert Sternberg cites confirmation bias as an explanation of why belief in psychic phenomena persists, despite the lack of evidence:


title: Psychokinesis

text: Some of the worst examples of confirmation bias are in research on parapsychology (...) Arguably, there is a whole field here with no powerful confirming data at all. But people want to believe, and so they find ways to believe.


title: Psychokinesis

text: Psychologist Daniel Wegner has argued that an introspection illusion contributes to belief in psychokinesis. He observes that in everyday experience, intention (such as wanting to turn on a light) is followed by action (such as flicking a light switch) in a reliable way, but the underlying neural mechanisms are outside awareness. Hence, though subjects may feel that they directly introspect their own free will, the experience of control is actually inferred from relations between the thought and the action. This theory of "apparent mental causation" acknowledges the influence of David Hume's view of the mind. This process for detecting when one is responsible for an action is not totally reliable, and when it goes wrong there can be an illusion of control. This can happen when an external event follows, and is congruent with, a thought in someone's mind, without an actual causal link. As evidence, Wegner cites a series of experiments on magical thinking in which subjects were induced to think they had influenced external events. In one experiment, subjects watched a basketball player taking a series of free throws. When they were instructed to visualize him making his shots, they felt that they had contributed to his success. Other experiments designed to create an illusion of psychokinesis have demonstrated that this depends, to some extent, on the subject's prior belief in psychokinesis.


title: Psychokinesis

text: A 2006 meta-analysis of 380 studies found a small positive effect that can be explained by publication bias.


title: Psychokinesis

text: Magicians have successfully simulated some of the specialized abilities of psychokinesis, such as object movement, spoon bending, levitation and teleportation. According to Robert Todd Carroll, there are many impressive magic tricks available to amateurs and professionals to simulate psychokinetic powers. Metal objects such as keys or cutlery can be bent using a number of different techniques, even if the performer has not had access to the items beforehand.


title: Psychokinesis

text: According to Richard Wiseman there are a number of ways for faking psychokinetic metal bending (PKMB). These include switching straight objects for pre-bent duplicates, the concealed application of force, and secretly inducing metallic fractures. Research has also suggested that (PKMB) effects can be created by verbal suggestion. On this subject the magician Ben Harris wrote:


title: Psychokinesis

text: If you are doing a really convincing job, then you should be able to put a bent key on the table and comment, ‘Look, it is still bending’, and have your spectators really believe that it is. This may sound the height of boldness; however, the effect is astounding – and combined with suggestion, it does work.


title: Psychokinesis

text: Between 1979 and 1981, the McDonnell Laboratory for Psychical Research at Washington University reported a series of experiments they named Project Alpha, in which two teenaged male subjects had demonstrated PK phenomena (including metal-bending and causing images to appear on film) under less than stringent laboratory conditions. James Randi eventually revealed that the subjects were two of his associates, amateur conjurers Steve Shaw and Michael Edwards. The pair had created the effects by standard trickery, but the researchers, being unfamiliar with magic techniques, interpreted them as proof of PK.


title: Psychokinesis

text: A 2014 study that utilized a magic trick to investigate paranormal belief on eyewitness testimony revealed that believers in psychokinesis were more likely to report a key continued to bend than non-believers.


title: Psychokinesis

text: Internationally there are individual skeptics of the paranormal and skeptics' organizations who offer cash prize money for demonstration of the existence of an extraordinary psychic power, such as psychokinesis. Prizes have been offered specifically for PK demonstrations: for example, businessman Gerald Fleming's offer of £250,000 to Uri Geller if he could bend a spoon under controlled conditions. The James Randi Educational Foundation offered the One Million Dollar Paranormal Challenge to any accepted candidate who managed to produce a paranormal event in a controlled, mutually agreed upon experiment. Currently, the Center for Inquiry offers a prize of $250,000, the largest in the world, for proof of the paranormal.


title: Psychokinesis

text: In September 2006, a survey on belief in various religious and paranormal topics conducted by phone and mail-in questionnaire polled 1,721 Americans on their belief in telekinesis. Of these participants, 28% of male participants and 31% of female participants selected "agree" or "strongly agree" with the statement, ""It is possible to influence the world through the mind alone.""


title: Psychokinesis

text: Parapsychologists divide psychokinetic phenomena into two categories: "macro-psychokinesis", large-scale psychokinetic effects that can be seen with the naked eye; and "micro-psychokinesis," small-scale psychokinetic effects that require the use of statistics to be detected. Some phenomena—such as apports, levitation, materialization, psychic healing, pyrokinesis, retrocausality, telekinesis, and thoughtography—are considered examples of psychokinesis.


title: Psychokinesis

text: In 2016, Caroline Watt stated "Overall, the majority of academic parapsychologists do not find the evidence compelling in favour of macro-PK".


title: Psychokinesis

text: There have been claimants of psychokinetic ability throughout history. Angelique Cottin (ca. 1846) known as the "Electric Girl" of France was an alleged generator of PK activity. Cottin and her family claimed that she produced electric emanations that allowed her to move pieces of furniture and scissors across a room. Frank Podmore wrote there were many observations which were "suggestive of fraud" such as the contact of the girl's garments to produce any of the alleged phenomena and the observations from several witnesses that noticed there was a double movement on the part of Cottin, a movement in the direction of the object thrown and afterwards away from it, but the movements so rapid they were not usually detected.


title: Psychokinesis

text: Spiritualist mediums have also claimed psychokinetic abilities. Eusapia Palladino, an Italian medium, could allegedly cause objects to move during séances. However, she was caught levitating a table with her foot by magician Joseph Rinn, and using tricks to move objects by psychologist Hugo Münsterberg. Other alleged PK mediums exposed as frauds include Anna Rasmussen and Maria Silbert.


title: Psychokinesis

text: Polish medium Stanisława Tomczyk, active in the early 20th century, claimed to be able to perform acts of telekinetic levitation by way of an entity she called "Little Stasia". A 1909 photograph of her, showing a pair of scissors "floating" between her hands, is often found in books and other publications as an example of telekinesis. Scientists suspected Tomczyk performed her feats by the use of a fine thread or hair between her hands. This was confirmed when psychical researchers who tested Tomczyk occasionally observed the thread.


title: Psychokinesis

text: Many of India's "godmen" have claimed macro-PK abilities and demonstrated apparently miraculous phenomena in public, although as more controls are put in place to prevent trickery, fewer phenomena are produced.


title: Psychokinesis

text: Annemarie Schaberl, a 19-year-old secretary, was said to have telekinetic powers by parapsychologist Hans Bender in the Rosenheim Poltergeist case in the 1960s. Magicians and scientists who investigated the case suspected the phenomena were produced by trickery.


title: Psychokinesis

text: Swami Rama, a yogi skilled in controlling his heart functions, was studied at the Menninger Foundation in the spring and fall of 1970 and was alleged by some observers at the foundation to have telekinetically moved a knitting needle twice from a distance of five feet. Although he wore a face-mask and gown to prevent allegations that he moved the needle with his breath or body movements, and air vents in the room were covered, at least one physician observer who was present was not convinced and expressed the opinion that air movement was somehow the cause.


title: Psychokinesis

text: Russian psychic Nina Kulagina came to wide public attention following the publication of Sheila Ostrander and Lynn Schroeder's bestseller "Psychic Discoveries Behind The Iron Curtain". The alleged Soviet psychic of the late 1960s and early 1970s was shown apparently performing telekinesis while seated in numerous black-and-white short films, and was also mentioned in the "U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency" report from 1978. Magicians and skeptics have argued that Kulagina's feats could easily be performed by one practiced in sleight of hand, or through means such as cleverly concealed or disguised threads, small pieces of magnetic metal, or mirrors.


title: Psychokinesis

text: James Hydrick, an American martial arts expert and psychic, was famous for his alleged psychokinetic ability to turn the pages of books and make pencils spin while placed on the edge of a desk. It was later revealed by magicians that he achieved his feats by air currents. Psychologist Richard Wiseman wrote that Hydrick learnt to move objects by blowing in a "highly deceptive" and skillful way. Hydrick confessed to Dan Korem that his feats were tricks: "My whole idea behind this in the first place was to see how dumb America was. How dumb the world is." In the late 1970s, British psychic Matthew Manning was the subject of laboratory research in the United States and England, and today claims healing powers. Magicians John Booth and Henry Gordon have suspected Manning used trickery to perform his feats.


title: Psychokinesis

text: In 1971, an American psychic named Felicia Parise allegedly moved a pill bottle across a kitchen counter by psychokinesis. Her feats were endorsed by parapsychologist Charles Honorton. Science writer Martin Gardner wrote that Parise had "bamboozled" Honorton by moving the bottle with an invisible thread stretched between her hands.


title: Psychokinesis

text: Boris Ermolaev, a Russian psychic, was known for levitating small objects. His methods were exposed on the World of Discovery documentary "Secrets of the Russian Psychics" (1992). He would sit on a chair and allegedly move the objects between his knees; but when filmed, lighting conditions revealed a fine thread fixed between his knees, suspending the objects.


title: Psychokinesis

text: Russian psychic Alla Vinogradova was said to be able to move objects without touching them on transparent acrylic plastic or a plexiglass sheet. Parapsychologist Stanley Krippner observed Vinogradova rub an aluminum tube before moving it allegedly by psychokinesis. He suggested that the effect was produced by an electrostatic charge. Vinogradova was featured in the Nova documentary "Secrets of the Psychics" (1993) which followed the debunking work of James Randi. She demonstrated her alleged psychokinetic abilities on-camera for Randi and other investigators. Before the experiments, she was observed combing her hair and rubbing the surface of the acrylic plastic. Massimo Polidoro has replicated Vinogradova's feats with acrylic surface, showing how easy it is to move any kind of object on it when it is charged with static electricity by rubbing a towel or hand on it. Physicist John Taylor wrote, "It is very likely that electrostatics is all that is needed to explain Alla Vinogradova's apparently paranormal feats."


title: Psychokinesis

text: Psychics have also claimed the psychokinetic ability to bend metal. Uri Geller was famous for his spoon bending demonstrations, allegedly by PK. He has been caught many times using sleight of hand. According to science writer Terence Hines, all of Geller's effects have been recreated using conjuring tricks.


title: Psychokinesis

text: The French psychic Jean-Pierre Girard has claimed he can bend metal bars by PK. He was tested in the 1970s but failed to produce any paranormal effects in scientifically controlled conditions. He was tested on January 19, 1977 during a two-hour experiment in a Paris laboratory, directed by physicist Yves Farge. A magician was also present. Girard failed to make any objects move paranormally. He failed two tests in Grenoble in June 1977 with magician James Randi. He was also tested on September 24, 1977 at a laboratory at the Nuclear Research Centre, and failed to bend any bars or change the metals' structure. Other experiments into spoon-bending were also negative, and witnesses described his feats as fraudulent. Girard later admitted he sometimes cheated to avoid disappointing the public, but insisted he had genuine psychic power. Magicians and scientists have written that he produced all his alleged psychokinetic feats through fraudulent means.


title: Psychokinesis

text: Stephen North, a British psychic in the late 1970s, was known for his alleged psychokinetic ability to bend spoons and teleport objects in and out of sealed containers. British physicist John Hasted tested North in a series of experiments which he claimed had demonstrated psychokinesis, though his experiments were criticized for lack of scientific controls. North was tested in Grenoble on 19 December 1977 in scientific conditions and the results were negative. According to James Randi, during a test at Birkbeck College, North was observed to have bent a metal sample with his bare hands. Randi wrote "I find it unfortunate that [Hasted] never had an epiphany in which he was able to recognize just how thoughtless, cruel, and predatory were the acts perpetrated on him by fakers who took advantage of his naivety and trust."


title: Psychokinesis

text: "PK parties" were a cultural fad in the 1980s, begun by Jack Houck, where groups of people were guided through rituals and chants to awaken metal-bending powers. They were encouraged to shout at the items of cutlery they had brought and to jump and scream to create an atmosphere of pandemonium (or what scientific investigators called heightened suggestibility). Critics were excluded and participants were told to avoid looking at their hands. Thousands of people attended these emotionally charged parties, and many were convinced they had bent the objects by paranormal means.


title: Psychokinesis

text: PK parties have been described as a campaign by paranormal believers to convince people of the existence of psychokinesis, on the basis of nonscientific data from personal experience and testimony. The United States National Academy of Sciences has criticized PK parties on the grounds that conditions are not reliable for obtaining scientific results and "are just those which psychologists and others have described as creating states of heightened suggestibility."


title: Psychokinesis

text: Ronnie Marcus, an Israeli psychic and claimant of psychokinetic metal-bending, was tested in 1994 in scientifically controlled conditions and failed to produce any paranormal phenomena. According to magicians, his alleged psychokinetic feats were sleight of hand tricks. Marcus bent a letter opener by the concealed application of force and a frame-by-frame analysis of video showed that he bent a spoon from pressure from his thumb by ordinary, physical means.


title: Psychokinesis

text: Psychokinesis and telekinesis have commonly been portrayed as superpowers in comic books, movies, television, video games, literature, and other forms of popular culture.


title: Psychokinesis

text: Notable portrayals of psychokinetic and/or telekinetic characters include the Teleks in the 1952 novella "Telek"; Carrie White in the Stephen King novel and its three film adaptations, "Carrie"; Ellen Burstyn in the 1980 healer-themed film "Resurrection"; the Jedi and Sith in the "Star Wars" franchise; the Psychic-type Pokémon in the "Pokémon" franchise, the Scanners in the 1981 film "Scanners"; Matilda Wormwood in the 1988 children's novel "Matilda" and its 1996 film adaptation; three high school seniors in the 2012 film "Chronicle"; Eleven as well as Vecna and various lab children from the Netflix series "Stranger Things"; Silver the Hedgehog in the "Sonic the Hedgehog" game and series franchise; Ness from the "Mother" franchise and Shin Seok-heon in the 2018 film "Psychokinesis".


title: The Road

text: The Road is a 2006 post-apocalyptic novel by American writer Cormac McCarthy. The book details the grueling journey of a father and his young son over a period of several months across a landscape blasted by an unspecified cataclysm that has destroyed industrial civilization and almost all life. The novel was awarded the 2007 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction and the James Tait Black Memorial Prize for Fiction in 2006. The book was adapted into a film of the same name in 2009, directed by John Hillcoat.


title: The Road

text: A father and his young son journey on foot across the post-apocalyptic ash-covered United States some years after an extinction event. The boy's mother, pregnant with him at the time of the disaster, died by suicide some time before.


title: The Road

text: Realizing they cannot survive the winter in more northern latitudes, the father takes the boy south along interstate highways towards the sea, carrying their meager possessions in their knapsacks and a supermarket cart. The father is suffering from a cough. He assures his son that they are "good guys" who are "carrying the fire". The pair have a revolver, but only two rounds. The father has tried to teach the boy to use the gun on himself if necessary, to avoid falling into the hands of cannibals.


title: The Road

text: They attempt to evade a group of marauders traveling along the road but one of the marauders discovers them and seizes the boy. The father shoots him dead and they flee the marauder's companions, abandoning most of their possessions. Later, when searching a house for supplies, they discover a locked cellar containing captives whom cannibals have been eating limb by limb, and flee into the woods.


title: The Road

text: As they near starvation, the pair discover a concealed bunker filled with food, clothes, and other supplies. They stay there for many days, regaining their strength, and then carry on, taking supplies with them in a cart. They encounter an elderly man with whom the boy insists they share food. Further along the road, they evade a group whose members include pregnant women, and soon after they discover an abandoned campsite with a newborn infant roasted on a spit. They soon run out of supplies and begin to starve before finding a house containing more food to carry in their cart, but the man's condition worsens.


title: The Road

text: The pair reach the sea, where they discover a boat that has drifted ashore. The man swims to it and recovers supplies, including a flare gun, which he demonstrates to the boy. The boy becomes ill. When they stop on the beach while the boy recovers, their cart is stolen. They pursue and confront the thief, a wretched man traveling alone. The father forces him to strip naked at gunpoint, and takes his clothes together with the cart. This distresses the boy, so the father returns and leaves the man's clothes and shoes on the road, but the man has disappeared.


title: The Road

text: While walking through a town inland, a man in a window shoots the father in the leg with an arrow. The father responds by shooting his assailant with the flare gun. The pair move further south along the beach. The father's condition worsens, and after several days he realizes he will soon die. The father tells the son he can talk to him in prayer after he is gone, and that he must continue without him. After the father dies, the boy stays with his body for three days. The boy is approached by a man carrying a shotgun, accompanied by his wife and their two children, a son and a daughter. The man convinces the boy he is one of the "good guys" and takes the boy under his protection.


title: The Road

text: In an interview with Oprah Winfrey, McCarthy said that the inspiration for the book came during a 2003 visit to El Paso, Texas, with his young son. Imagining what the city might look like fifty to a hundred years into the future, he pictured "fires on the hill" and thought about his son. He took some initial notes but did not return to the idea until a few years later, while in Ireland. Then the novel came to him quickly, taking only six weeks to write, and he dedicated it to his son, John Francis McCarthy.


title: The Road

text: In an interview with John Jurgensen of "The Wall Street Journal", McCarthy described conversations he and his brother had about different scenarios for an apocalypse. One of the scenarios involved survivors turning to cannibalism: "when everything's gone, the only thing left to eat is each other."


title: The Road

text: "The Road" has received numerous positive reviews and honors since its publication. The review aggregator Metacritic reported the book had an average score of 90 out of 100, based on thirty-one reviews. Critics have deemed it "heartbreaking", "haunting", and "emotionally shattering". "The Village Voice" referred to it as "McCarthy's purest fable yet." In a "New York Review of Books" article, author Michael Chabon heralded the novel. Discussing the novel's relation to established genres, Chabon insists "The Road" is not science fiction; although "the adventure story in both its modern and epic forms... structures the narrative", Chabon says, "ultimately it is as a lyrical epic of horror that "The Road" is best understood." "Entertainment Weekly" in June 2008 named "The Road" the best book, fiction or non-fiction, of the past 25 years and put it on its end-of-the-decade "best-of" list, saying, "With its spare prose, McCarthy's post-apocalyptic odyssey from 2006 managed to be both harrowing and heartbreaking." In 2019, the novel was ranked 17th on "The Guardian"s list of the 100 best books of the 21st century.


title: The Road

text: On March 28, 2007, the selection of "The Road" as the next novel in Oprah Winfrey's Book Club was announced. A televised interview on "The Oprah Winfrey Show" was conducted on June 5, 2007, McCarthy's first, although he had been interviewed for the print media before. The announcement of McCarthy's television appearance surprised his followers. "Wait a minute until I can pick my jaw up off the floor," said John Wegner, an English professor at Angelo State University in San Angelo, Texas, and editor of the "Cormac McCarthy Journal", when told of the interview. During Winfrey's interview, McCarthy insisted his son, John Francis, was also his co-author, as some of the conversations between the father and son in the novel were based upon conversations between McCarthy and John Francis in real life. McCarthy also dedicated the novel to his son, possibly as an expression of paternal love as well as a depiction of it, although he did not say as much in the interview.


title: The Road

text: On November 5, 2019, the "BBC News" listed "The Road" on its list of the 100 most inspiring novels. Although the text does not explicitly mention climate change, "The Guardian" listed it as one of the five best climate change novels and George Monbiot has called it "the most important environmental book ever written" for depicting a world without a biosphere.


title: The Road

text: In 2006, McCarthy was awarded the James Tait Black Memorial Prize in fiction and the Believer Book Award and was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award for fiction. On April 16, 2007, the novel was awarded the 2007 Pulitzer Prize for fiction. In 2012, it was shortlisted for the Best of the James Tait Black.


title: The Road

text: A film adaptation of the novel, directed by John Hillcoat and written by Joe Penhall, opened in theatres on November 25, 2009. The film stars Viggo Mortensen as the man and Kodi Smit-McPhee as the boy. Production took place in Louisiana, Oregon, and several locations in Pennsylvania. The film, like the novel, received generally positive reviews from critics.


title: Victoria Falls

text: Victoria Falls (Lozi: "Mosi-oa-Tunya", "The Smoke That Thunders"; Tonga: "Shungu Namutitima", "Boiling Water") is a waterfall on the Zambezi River in southern Africa, which provides habitat for several unique species of plants and animals. It is located on the border between Zambia and Zimbabwe and is one of the world's largest waterfalls, with a width of .


title: Victoria Falls

text: Archeological sites and oral history describe a long record of African knowledge of the site. Though known to some European geographers before the 19th century, Scottish missionary David Livingstone identified the falls in 1855, providing the English colonial name of Victoria Falls after Queen Victoria. Since the mid 20th century, the site has been an increasingly important source of tourism. Zambia and Zimbabwe both have national parks and tourism infrastructure at the site. Research in the late 2010s found that climate change caused precipitation variability is likely to change the character of the fall.


title: Victoria Falls

text: David Livingstone, the Scottish missionary and explorer, is the first European recorded to have viewed the falls on 16 November 1855, from what is now known as Livingstone Island, one of two land masses in the middle of the river, immediately upstream from the falls near the Zambian shore. Livingstone named his sighting in honour of Queen Victoria, but the Sotho language name, "Mosi-oa-Tunya"—"The Smoke That Thunders"—continues in common usage. The World Heritage List officially recognises both names. Livingstone also cited an older name, "Seongo" or "Chongwe", which means "The Place of the Rainbow", as a result of the constant spray.


title: Victoria Falls

text: The nearby national park in Zambia is named "Mosi-oa-Tunya", whereas the national park and town on the Zimbabwean shore are both named Victoria Falls.


title: Victoria Falls

text: While it is neither the highest nor the widest waterfall in the world, the Victoria Falls are classified the largest, based on its combined width of and height of , resulting in the world's largest sheet of falling water. The Victoria Falls are roughly twice the height of North America's Niagara Falls and well over twice its width.


title: Victoria Falls

text: For a considerable distance upstream from the falls, the Zambezi flows over a level sheet of basalt, in a shallow valley, bounded by low and distant sandstone hills. The river's course is dotted with numerous tree-covered islands, which increase in number where the river approaches the falls. There are no mountains, escarpments, or deep valleys; only a flat plateau extending hundreds of kilometres in all directions.


title: Victoria Falls

text: The falls are formed where the full width of the river plummets in a single vertical drop into a transverse chasm wide, carved by its waters along a fracture zone in the basalt plateau. The depth of the chasm, called the First Gorge, varies from at its western end to in the centre. The only outlet to the First Gorge is a gap about two-thirds of the way across the width of the falls from the western end. The whole volume of the river pours into the Victoria Falls gorges from this narrow cleft.


title: Victoria Falls

text: There are two islands on the crest of the falls that are large enough to divide the curtain of water even at full flood: Boaruka Island (or Cataract Island) near the western bank, and Livingstone Island near the middle — the point from which Livingstone first viewed the falls. At less than full flood, additional islets divide the curtain of water into separate parallel streams. The main streams are named, in order from Zimbabwe (west) to Zambia (east): the "Devil's Cataract" (called "Leaping Water" by some), the "Main Falls", the "Rainbow Falls" (the highest) and the "Eastern Cataract".


title: Victoria Falls

text: The River Zambezi, upstream from the falls, experiences a rainy season from late November to early April, and a dry season the rest of the year. The river's annual flood season is February to May with a peak in April, The spray from the falls typically rises to a height of over , and sometimes even twice as high, and is visible from up to away. At full moon, a "moonbow" can be seen in the spray instead of the usual daylight rainbow. During the flood season, however, it is impossible to see the foot of the falls and most of its face, and the walks along the cliff opposite it are in a constant shower and shrouded in mist. Close to the edge of the cliff, spray shoots upward like inverted rain, especially at Zambia's Knife-Edge Bridge.


title: Victoria Falls

text: When the dry season takes effect, the islets on the crest become wider and more numerous, and in September to January up to half of the rocky face of the falls may become dry and the bottom of the First Gorge can be seen along most of its length. At this time it becomes possible (though not necessarily safe) to walk across some stretches of the river at the crest. It is also possible to walk to the bottom of the First Gorge at the Zimbabwean side. The minimum flow, which occurs in November, is around a tenth of the April figure; this variation in flow is greater than that of other major falls, and causes the Victoria Falls' annual average flow rate to be lower than might be expected based on the maximum flow. In 2019 unusually low rain dramatically reduced the fall to the lowest flow in a century. Global climate change and changed climate patterns are suggested to have caused this.


title: Victoria Falls

text: The entire volume of the Zambezi River pours through the First Gorge's exit for a distance of about , then enters a zigzagging series of gorges designated by the order in which the river reaches them. Water entering the "Second Gorge" makes a sharp right turn and has carved out a deep pool there called the "Boiling Pot". Reached via a steep footpath from the Zambian side, it is about across. Its surface is smooth at low water, but at high water is marked by enormous, slow swirls and heavy boiling turbulence. Objects and animals that are swept over the falls, including the occasional hippopotamus, crocodile, or human, are frequently found swirling about here or washed up at the north-east end of the Second Gorge. This is where the bodies of Mrs Moss and Mr Orchard, mutilated by crocodiles, were found in 1910 after two canoes were capsized by a hippo at Long Island above the falls.


title: Victoria Falls

text: The Upper Zambezi River originally drained south through present day Botswana to join the Limpopo River. A general uplift of the land between Zimbabwe and the Kalahari desert about 2 million years ago blocked this drainage route, and a large paleo lake known as Lake Makgadikgadi formed between the Kalahari and the Batoka Basaltic Plateau of Zimbabwe and Zambia. This lake was originally endorheic and had no natural outlet. Under wetter climate conditions about 20,000 years BP, it eventually overflowed and began to drain to the east, cutting the Batoka Gorge through the basalt as it went.


title: Victoria Falls

text: The recent geological history of Victoria Falls can be seen in the overall form of the Batoka Gorge, with its six individual gorges and eight past positions of the falls. The east–west oriented gorges imply structural control with alignment along joints of shatter zones, or faults with of vertical displacement as is the case of the second and fifth gorges. Headward erosion along these structural lines of weakness would establish a new fall line and abandonment of the earlier line. North-south oriented joints control the south flowing sections of the river. One of these is the "Boiling Pot", which links the First Gorge with the Second Gorge.


title: Victoria Falls

text: The falls may have already started cutting back the next major gorge, at the dip in one side of the "Devil's Cataract", between the western river bank and Cataract Island. The lip in the current falls is lowest here and carries the greatest concentration of water at flood stage.


title: Victoria Falls

text: The sedimentary sequence overlying the basalt at the Zambezi River margins is called the Victoria Falls Formation, which consists of gravel, the Pipe sandstone, Kalahari sand, aeolian sand and alluvium. A 15–45 m scarp bounds the river about 5–6 km from the main channel, and a series of river terraces are evident between the scarp and the channel.


title: Victoria Falls

text: The basalt plateau of Victoria Falls, over which the Zambezi River flows, was formed during the Jurassic Era, around 200 million years ago.


title: Victoria Falls

text: Early Stone Age Acheulean stone artefacts and Oldowan tools were excavated at archaeological sites around the falls, as well as Sangoan tools and Lupemban artefacts dating to the Middle Stone Age.


title: Victoria Falls

text: Early Iron Age pottery was excavated at a vlei site near Masuma Dam in the early 1960s. Evidence for iron smelting was also found in a settlement dated to the late first millennium AD.


title: Victoria Falls

text: The southern Tonga people known as the Batoka/Tokalea called the falls "Shungu na mutitima". The Matabele, later arrivals, named them "aManz' aThunqayo", and the Batswana and Makololo (whose language is used by the Lozi people) call them "Mosi-o-Tunya". All these names mean essentially "the smoke that thunders".


title: Victoria Falls

text: A map drawn by Nicolas de Fer in 1715 shows the fall clearly marked in the correct position. It also shows dotted lines denoting trade routes that David Livingstone followed 140 years later. A map from c. 1750 drawn by Jacques Nicolas Bellin for Abbé Antoine François Prevost d'Exiles marks the falls as "cataractes" and notes a settlement to the north of the Zambezi as being friendly with the Portuguese at the time.


title: Victoria Falls

text: In November 1855, David Livingstone was the first European who saw the falls, when he travelled from the upper Zambezi to the mouth of the river between 1852 and 1856. The falls were well known to local tribes, and Voortrekker hunters may have known of them, as may the Arabs under a name equivalent to "the end of the world". Europeans were sceptical of their reports, perhaps thinking that the lack of mountains and valleys on the plateau made a large falls unlikely.


title: Victoria Falls

text: Livingstone had been told about the falls before he reached them from upriver and was paddled across to a small island that now bears the name Livingstone Island in Zambia. Livingstone had previously been impressed by the Ngonye Falls further upstream, but found the new falls much more impressive, and gave them their English name in honour of Queen Victoria. He wrote of the falls, "No one can imagine the beauty of the view from anything witnessed in England. It had never been seen before by European eyes; but scenes so lovely must have been gazed upon by angels in their flight."


title: Victoria Falls

text: In 1860, Livingstone returned to the area and made a detailed study of the falls with John Kirk. Other early European visitors included Portuguese explorer Serpa Pinto, Czech explorer Emil Holub, who made the first detailed plan of the falls and its surroundings in 1875 (published in 1880), and British artist Thomas Baines, who executed some of the earliest paintings of the falls. Until the area was opened up by the building of the railway in 1905, though, the falls were seldom visited by other Europeans. Some writers believe that the Portuguese priest Gonçalo da Silveira was the first European to catch sight of the falls back in the sixteenth century.


title: Victoria Falls

text: European settlement of the Victoria Falls area started around 1900 in response to the desire of Cecil Rhodes' British South Africa Company for mineral rights and imperial rule north of the Zambezi, and the exploitation of other natural resources such as timber forests north-east of the falls, and ivory and animal skins. Before 1905, the river was crossed above the falls at the Old Drift, by dugout canoe or a barge towed across with a steel cable. Rhodes' vision of a Cape-Cairo railway drove plans for the first bridge across the Zambezi. He insisted it be built where the spray from the falls would fall on passing trains, so the site at the Second Gorge was chosen. (See the main article Victoria Falls Bridge for details.) From 1905 the railway offered accessible travel from as far as the Cape in the south and from 1909, as far as the Belgian Congo in the north. In 1904 the Victoria Falls Hotel was opened to accommodate visitors arriving on the new railway. The falls became an increasingly popular attraction during British colonial rule of Northern Rhodesia (Zambia) and Southern Rhodesia (Zimbabwe), with the town of Victoria Falls becoming the main tourist centre.


title: Victoria Falls

text: In 1964, Northern Rhodesia became the independent state of Zambia. The following year, Rhodesia unilaterally declared independence. This was not recognised by Zambia, the United Kingdom nor the vast majority of states and led to United Nations-mandated sanctions. In response to the emerging crisis, in 1966 Zambia restricted or stopped border crossings; it did not re-open the border completely until 1980. Guerrilla warfare arose on the southern side of the Zambezi from 1972: the Rhodesian Bush War. Visitor numbers began to drop, particularly on the Rhodesian side. The war affected Zambia through military incursions, causing the latter to impose security measures including the stationing of soldiers to restrict access to the gorges and some parts of the falls.


title: Victoria Falls

text: Zimbabwe's internationally recognised independence in 1980 brought comparative peace, and the 1980s witnessed renewed levels of tourism and the development of the region as a centre for adventure sports. Activities that gained popularity in the area include whitewater rafting in the gorges, bungee jumping from the bridge, game fishing, horse riding, kayaking, and flights over the falls.


title: Victoria Falls

text: By the end of the 1990s almost 400,000 people were visiting the falls annually, and this was expected to rise to over a million in the next decade. Unlike the game parks, Victoria Falls has more Zimbabwean and Zambian visitors than international tourists; the attraction is accessible by bus and train, and is therefore comparatively inexpensive to reach.


title: Victoria Falls

text: Both countries permit tourists to make day trips across the border to view the falls from both viewpoints. Visitors with single-entry visas are required to purchase a visa each time they cross the border; visas can be obtained at both border posts. Costs vary from US$50–$80 (). Visa regulations change frequently; visitors are advised to check the rules currently in effect in both countries before crossing the border in either direction. Additionally, foreign tourists may purchase a KAZA visa for US$50 that will permit visitors to travel between Zambia and Zimbabwe for up to 30 days as long as they remain within the covered countries.


title: Victoria Falls

text: A famous feature is the naturally formed "Armchair" (now sometimes called "Devil's Pool"), near the edge of the falls on the Zambian side, along the western tip of Livingstone Island. When the river flow is at a certain level, usually between September and December, a rock barrier forms an eddy with minimal current, allowing adventurous swimmers to splash around in relative safety in front of the point where the water cascades over the falls. One death of a tourist guide has been reported.


title: Victoria Falls

text: The numbers of visitors to the Zimbabwean side of the falls has historically been much higher than the number visiting the Zambian side, due to the greater development of the visitor facilities there. However, the number of tourists visiting Zimbabwe began to decline in the early 2000s as political tensions between supporters and opponents of president Robert Mugabe increased. In 2006, hotel occupancy on the Zimbabwean side hovered at around 30%, while the Zambian side was near capacity, with rates in top hotels reaching US$630 per night. The rapid development has prompted the United Nations to consider revoking the falls' status as a World Heritage Site. In addition, problems of waste disposal and a lack of effective management of the falls' environment are a concern.


title: Victoria Falls

text: The two national parks at the falls are relatively small — Mosi-oa-Tunya National Park is and Victoria Falls National Park is . However, next to the latter on the southern bank is the Zambezi National Park, extending west along the river. Animals can move between the two Zimbabwean parks and can also reach Matetsi Safari Area, Kazuma Pan National Park and Hwange National Park to the south.


title: Victoria Falls

text: On the Zambian side, fences and the outskirts of Livingstone tend to confine most animals to the Mosi-oa-Tunya National Park. In addition fences put up by lodges in response to crime restrict animal movement.


title: Victoria Falls

text: On the Botswanan side of the border, Chobe National Park is a short distance to travel to and is a popular location for a day trip for many tourists visiting Victoria Falls for extended stays. It offers more diverse flora and fauna than Hwange National Park.


title: Victoria Falls

text: In 2004 a separate group of police called the Tourism Police was started. They are commonly seen around the main tourist areas, and can be identified by their uniforms with yellow reflective bibs.


title: Victoria Falls

text: Riverine forest with palm trees lines the banks and islands above the falls. The most notable aspect of the area's vegetation though is the rainforest nurtured by the spray from the falls, containing plants rare for the area such as pod mahogany, ebony, ivory palm, wild date palm, batoko plum and creepers and lianas. Outside the riparian zone, mopane woodland savannah predominates in the area, with smaller areas of miombo and Rhodesian teak woodland and scrubland savannah. Vegetation has suffered in recent droughts, and so have the animals that depend on it, particularly antelope.


title: Victoria Falls

text: The national parks contain abundant wildlife including sizeable populations of elephant, Cape buffalo, giraffe, Grant's zebra, and a variety of antelope. Lions, African leopards and South African cheetahs are only occasionally seen. Vervet monkeys and baboons are common. The river above the falls contains large populations of hippopotamus and crocodile. African bush elephants cross the river in the dry season at particular crossing points.


title: Victoria Falls

text: Klipspringers, honey badgers, lizards and clawless otters can be glimpsed in the gorges, but they are mainly known for 35 species of raptors. The Taita falcon, Verreaux's eagle, peregrine falcon and augur buzzard breed there. Above the falls, herons, African fish eagles and numerous kinds of waterfowl are common.


title: Victoria Falls

text: The river is home to 39 species of fish below the falls and 84 species above it. This illustrates the effectiveness of the falls as a dividing barrier between the upper and lower Zambezi.


title: Victoria Falls

text: In February 2020, National Geographic highlighted the threat to the falls from extreme weather conditions. Rising temperatures make the region hotter and drier. There is substantial water flow variability from year to year, with a significant drop in the general trend of water flow in September, October, November and December. This is particularly pronounced in drought years, which are becoming more frequent and intense. Such occurrences have affected the aesthetics of the waterfalls, and there are fears that Victoria Falls might join other World Heritage sites categorised as last-chance destinations.


title: Victoria Falls

text: Recognition of the risks to the falls has sparked great debate among those in the tourism industry in both Zambia and Zimbabwe. While it has already had a negative impact on tourism, many experts in the region dismiss the story as ill-researched and irresponsible journalism. They do not deny climate change and the impact it is having on the amount of water that cascades over the falls, but they argue the narrative is incomplete.


title: Equal Rights Amendment

text: The Equal Rights Amendment (ERA) is a proposed amendment to the United States Constitution designed to guarantee equal legal rights for all American citizens regardless of sex. Proponents assert it would end legal distinctions between men and women in matters of divorce, property, employment, and other matters. The first version of an ERA was written by Alice Paul and Crystal Eastman and introduced in Congress in December 1923.


title: Equal Rights Amendment

text: In the early history of the Equal Rights Amendment, middle-class women were largely supportive, while those speaking for the working class were often opposed, pointing out that employed women needed special protections regarding working conditions and employment hours. With the rise of the women's movement in the United States during the 1960s, the ERA garnered increasing support, and, after being reintroduced by Representative Martha Griffiths in 1971, it was approved by the U.S. House of Representatives on October 12, 1971, and by the U.S. Senate on March 22, 1972, thus submitting the ERA to the state legislatures for ratification, as provided by Article V of the U.S. Constitution.


title: Equal Rights Amendment

text: Congress had originally set a ratification deadline of March 22, 1979, for the state legislatures to consider the ERA. Through 1977, the amendment received 35 of the necessary 38 state ratifications. With wide, bipartisan support (including that of both major political parties, both houses of Congress, and presidents Richard Nixon, Gerald Ford, and Jimmy Carter) the ERA seemed destined for ratification until Phyllis Schlafly mobilized conservative women in opposition. These women argued that the ERA would disadvantage housewives, cause women to be drafted into the military and to lose protections such as alimony, and eliminate the tendency for mothers to obtain custody over their children in divorce cases. Many labor feminists also opposed the ERA on the basis that it would eliminate protections for women in labor law, though over time more and more unions and labor feminist leaders turned toward supporting it.


title: Equal Rights Amendment

text: Five state legislatures (Idaho, Kentucky, Nebraska, Tennessee, and South Dakota) voted to revoke their ERA ratifications. The first four rescinded before the original March 22, 1979 ratification deadline, while the South Dakota legislature did so by voting to sunset its ratification as of that original deadline. It remains an unresolved legal question as to whether a state can revoke its ratification of a federal constitutional amendment.


title: Equal Rights Amendment

text: In 1978, Congress passed (by simple majorities in each house), and President Carter signed, a joint resolution with the intent of extending the ratification deadline to June 30, 1982. Because no additional state legislatures ratified the ERA between March 22, 1979, and June 30, 1982, the validity of that disputed extension was rendered academic. Since 1978, attempts have been made in Congress to extend or remove the deadline.


title: Equal Rights Amendment

text: In the 2010s, due in part to fourth-wave feminism and the Me Too movement, there was a renewed interest in adoption of the ERA. In 2017, Nevada became the first state to ratify the ERA after the expiration of both deadlines, and Illinois followed in 2018. In 2020, Virginia's General Assembly passed a ratification resolution for the ERA, claiming to bring the number of ratifications to 38. However, experts and advocates have acknowledged legal uncertainty about the consequences of the Virginian ratification, due to expired deadlines and five states' revocations.


title: Equal Rights Amendment

text: The resolution, "Proposing an amendment to the Constitution of the United States relative to equal rights for men and women", reads, in part:


title: Equal Rights Amendment

text: On September 25, 1921, the National Woman's Party announced its plans to campaign for an amendment to the U.S. Constitution to guarantee women equal rights with men. The text of the proposed amendment read:


title: Equal Rights Amendment

text: Alice Paul, the head of the National Women's Party, believed that the Nineteenth Amendment would not be enough to ensure that men and women were treated equally regardless of sex. In 1923, at Seneca Falls, New York, she revised the proposed amendment to read:


title: Equal Rights Amendment

text: Paul named this version the Lucretia Mott Amendment, after a female abolitionist who fought for women's rights and attended the First Women's Rights Convention. The proposal was seconded by Dr. Frances Dickinson, a cousin of Susan B. Anthony.


title: Equal Rights Amendment

text: In 1943, Alice Paul further revised the amendment to reflect the wording of the Fifteenth and Nineteenth Amendments. This text became Section 1 of the version passed by Congress in 1972.


title: Equal Rights Amendment

text: As a result, in the 1940s, ERA opponents proposed an alternative, which provided that "no distinctions on the basis of sex shall be made except such as are reasonably justified by differences in physical structure, biological differences, or social function." It was quickly rejected by both pro and anti-ERA coalitions.


title: Equal Rights Amendment

text: Since the 1920s, the Equal Rights Amendment has been accompanied by discussion among feminists about the meaning of women's equality. Alice Paul and her National Woman's Party asserted that women should be on equal terms with men in all regards, even if that means sacrificing benefits given to women through protective legislation, such as shorter work hours and no night work or heavy lifting. Opponents of the amendment, such as the Women's Joint Congressional Committee, believed that the loss of these benefits to women would not be worth the supposed gain to them in equality. In 1924, "The Forum" hosted a debate between Doris Stevens and Alice Hamilton concerning the two perspectives on the proposed amendment. Their debate reflected the wider tension in the developing feminist movement of the early 20th century between two approaches toward gender equality. One approach emphasized the common humanity of women and men, while the other stressed women's unique experiences and how they were different from men, seeking recognition for specific needs. The opposition to the ERA was led by Mary Anderson and the Women's Bureau beginning in 1923. These feminists argued that legislation including mandated minimum wages, safety regulations, restricted daily and weekly hours, lunch breaks, and maternity provisions would be more beneficial to the majority of women who were forced to work out of economic necessity, not personal fulfillment. The debate also drew from struggles between working class and professional women. Alice Hamilton, in her speech "Protection for Women Workers", said that the ERA would strip working women of the small protections they had achieved, leaving them powerless to further improve their condition in the future, or to attain necessary protections in the present.


title: Equal Rights Amendment

text: The National Woman's Party already had tested its approach in Wisconsin, where it won passage of the Wisconsin Equal Rights Law in 1921. The party then took the ERA to Congress, where U.S. senator Charles Curtis, a future vice president of the United States, introduced it for the first time in October 1921. Although the ERA was introduced in every congressional session between 1921 and 1972, it almost never reached the floor of either the Senate or the House for a vote. Instead, it was usually blocked in committee; except in 1946, when it was defeated in the Senate by a vote of 38 to 35—not receiving the required two-thirds supermajority.


title: Equal Rights Amendment

text: In 1950 and 1953, the ERA was passed by the Senate with a provision known as "the Hayden rider", introduced by Arizona senator Carl Hayden. The Hayden rider added a sentence to the ERA to keep special protections for women: "The provisions of this article shall not be construed to impair any rights, benefits, or exemptions now or hereafter conferred by law upon persons of the female sex." By allowing women to keep their existing and future special protections, it was expected that the ERA would be more appealing to its opponents. Though opponents were marginally more in favor of the ERA with the Hayden rider, supporters of the original ERA believed it negated the amendment's original purpose—causing the amendment not to be passed in the House.


title: Equal Rights Amendment

text: ERA supporters were hopeful that the second term of President Dwight Eisenhower would advance their agenda. Eisenhower had publicly promised to "assure women everywhere in our land equality of rights," and in 1958, Eisenhower asked a joint session of Congress to pass the Equal Rights Amendment, the first president to show such a level of support for the amendment. However, the National Woman's Party found the amendment to be unacceptable and asked it to be withdrawn whenever the Hayden rider was added to the ERA.


title: Equal Rights Amendment

text: The Republican Party included support of the ERA in its platform beginning in 1940, renewing the plank every four years until 1980. The ERA was strongly opposed by the American Federation of Labor and other labor unions, which feared the amendment would invalidate protective labor legislation for women. Eleanor Roosevelt and most New Dealers also opposed the ERA. They felt that ERA was designed for middle-class women, but that working-class women needed government protection. They also feared that the ERA would undercut the male-dominated labor unions that were a core component of the New Deal coalition. Most Northern Democrats, who aligned themselves with the anti-ERA labor unions, opposed the amendment. The ERA was supported by Southern Democrats and almost all Republicans.


title: Equal Rights Amendment

text: At the 1944 Democratic National Convention, the Democrats made the divisive step of including the ERA in their platform, but the Democratic Party did not become united in favor of the amendment until congressional passage in 1972. The main support base for the ERA until the late 1960s was among middle class Republican women. The League of Women Voters, formerly the National American Woman Suffrage Association, opposed the Equal Rights Amendment until 1972, fearing the loss of protective labor legislation.


title: Equal Rights Amendment

text: At the Democratic National Convention in 1960, a proposal to endorse the ERA was rejected after it was opposed by groups including the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), the AFL–CIO, labor unions such as the American Federation of Teachers, Americans for Democratic Action (ADA), the American Nurses Association, the Women's Division of the Methodist Church, and the National Councils of Jewish, Catholic, and Negro Women. Presidential candidate John F. Kennedy announced his support of the ERA in an October 21, 1960, letter to the chairman of the National Woman's Party. When Kennedy was elected, he made Esther Peterson the highest-ranking woman in his administration as an assistant secretary of labor. Peterson publicly opposed the Equal Rights Amendment based on her belief that it would weaken protective labor legislation. Peterson referred to the National Woman's Party members, most of them veteran suffragists and preferred the "specific bills for specific ills" approach to equal rights. Ultimately, Kennedy's ties to labor unions meant that he and his administration did not support the ERA.


title: Equal Rights Amendment

text: President Kennedy appointed a blue-ribbon commission on women, the President's Commission on the Status of Women, to investigate the problem of sex discrimination in the United States. The commission was chaired by Eleanor Roosevelt, who opposed the ERA but no longer spoke against it publicly. In the early 1960s, Eleanor Roosevelt announced that, due to unionization, she believed the ERA was no longer a threat to women as it once may have been and told supporters that, as far as she was concerned, they could have the amendment if they wanted it. However, she never went so far as to endorse the ERA. The commission that she chaired reported (after her death) that no ERA was needed, believing that the Supreme Court could give sex the same "suspect" test as race and national origin, through interpretation of the Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments of the Constitution. The Supreme Court did not provide the "suspect" class test for sex, however, resulting in a continuing lack of equal rights. The commission did, though, help win passage of the Equal Pay Act of 1963, which banned sex discrimination in wages in a number of professions (it would later be amended in the early 1970s to include the professions that it initially excluded) and secured an executive order from Kennedy eliminating sex discrimination in the civil service. The commission, composed largely of anti-ERA feminists with ties to labor, proposed remedies to the widespread sex discrimination it unearthed.


title: Equal Rights Amendment

text: The national commission spurred the establishment of state and local commissions on the status of women and arranged for follow-up conferences in the years to come. The following year, the Civil Rights Act of 1964 banned workplace discrimination not only on the basis of race, religion, and national origin, but also on the basis of sex, thanks to the lobbying of Alice Paul and Coretta Scott King and the political influence of Representative Martha Griffiths of Michigan.


title: Equal Rights Amendment

text: A new women's movement gained ground in the later 1960s as a result of a variety of factors: Betty Friedan's bestseller "The Feminine Mystique"; the network of women's rights commissions formed by Kennedy's national commission; the frustration over women's social and economic status; and anger over the lack of government and Equal Employment Opportunity Commission enforcement of the Equal Pay Act and Title VII of the Civil Rights Act. In June 1966, at the Third National Conference on the Status of Women in Washington, D.C., Betty Friedan and a group of activists frustrated with the lack of government action in enforcing Title VII of the Civil Rights Act formed the National Organization for Women (NOW) to act as an "NAACP for women", demanding full equality for American women and men. In 1967, at the urging of Alice Paul, NOW endorsed the Equal Rights Amendment. The decision caused some union Democrats and social conservatives to leave the organization and form the Women's Equity Action League (within a few years WEAL also endorsed the ERA), but the move to support the amendment benefited NOW, bolstering its membership. By the late 1960s, NOW had made significant political and legislative victories and was gaining enough power to become a major lobbying force. In 1969, newly elected representative Shirley Chisholm of New York gave her famous speech "Equal Rights for Women" on the floor of the U.S. House of Representatives.


title: Equal Rights Amendment

text: In February 1970, NOW picketed the United States Senate, a subcommittee of which was holding hearings on a constitutional amendment to lower the voting age to 18. NOW disrupted the hearings and demanded a hearing on the Equal Rights Amendment and won a meeting with senators to discuss the ERA. That August, over 20,000 American women held a nationwide Women's Strike for Equality protest to demand full social, economic, and political equality. Said Betty Friedan of the strike, "All kinds of women's groups all over the country will be using this week on August 26 particularly, to point out those areas in women's life which are still not addressed. For example, a question of equality before the law; we are interested in the Equal Rights Amendment." Despite being centered in New York City—which was regarded as one of the biggest strongholds for NOW and other groups sympathetic to the women's liberation movement such as Redstockings—and having a small number of participants in contrast to the large-scale anti-war and civil rights protests that had occurred in the recent time prior to the event, the strike was credited as one of the biggest turning points in the rise of second-wave feminism.


title: Equal Rights Amendment

text: In Washington, D.C., protesters presented a sympathetic Senate leadership with a petition for the Equal Rights Amendment at the U.S. Capitol. Influential news sources such as "Time" also supported the cause of the protestors. Soon after the strike took place, activists distributed literature across the country as well. In 1970, congressional hearings began on the ERA.


title: Equal Rights Amendment

text: On August 10, 1970, Michigan Democrat Martha Griffiths successfully brought the Equal Rights Amendment to the House floor, after 15 years of the joint resolution having languished in the House Judiciary Committee. The joint resolution passed in the House and continued on to the Senate, which voted for the ERA with an added clause that women would be exempt from the military. The 91st Congress, however, ended before the joint resolution could progress any further.


title: Equal Rights Amendment

text: Griffiths reintroduced the ERA, and achieved success on Capitol Hill with her , which was adopted by the House on October 12, 1971, with a vote of 354 yeas (For), 24 nays (Against) and 51 not voting. Griffiths's joint resolution was then adopted by the Senate—without change—on March 22, 1972, by a vote of 84 yeas, 8 nays and 7 not voting. The Senate version, drafted by Senator Birch Bayh of Indiana, passed after the defeat of an amendment proposed by Senator Sam Ervin of North Carolina that would have exempted women from the draft. President Richard Nixon immediately endorsed the ERA's approval upon its passage by the 92nd Congress.


title: Equal Rights Amendment

text: On March 22, 1972, the ERA was placed before the state legislatures, with a seven-year deadline to acquire ratification by three-fourths (38) of the state legislatures. A majority of states ratified the proposed constitutional amendment within a year. Hawaii became the first state to ratify the ERA, which it did on the same day the amendment was approved by Congress: The U.S. Senate's vote on took place in the mid-to-late afternoon in Washington, D.C., when it was still midday in Hawaii. The Hawaii Senate and House of Representatives voted their approval shortly after noon Hawaii Standard Time.


title: Equal Rights Amendment

text: During 1972, a total of 22 state legislatures ratified the amendment and eight more joined in early 1973. Between 1974 and 1977, only five states approved the ERA, and advocates became worried about the approaching March 22, 1979, deadline. At the same time, the legislatures of five states that had ratified the ERA then adopted legislation purporting to rescind those ratifications. If, indeed, a state legislature has the ability to rescind, then the ERA actually had ratifications by only 30 states—not 35—when March 22, 1979, arrived.


title: Equal Rights Amendment

text: Although Article V is silent as to whether a state may rescind, or otherwise revoke, a previous ratification of a proposed—but not yet adopted—amendment to the U.S. Constitution, legislators in the following six states nevertheless voted to retract their earlier ratification of the ERA:


title: Equal Rights Amendment

text: The lieutenant governor of Kentucky, Thelma Stovall, who was acting as governor in the governor's absence, vetoed the rescinding resolution. Given that Article V explicitly provides that amendments are valid "when ratified by the legislatures of three fourths of the several states" this raised questions as to whether a state's governor, or someone temporarily acting as governor, has the power to veto any measure related to amending the United States Constitution.


title: Equal Rights Amendment

text: On February 11, 2022, the West Virginia Senate passed a resolution rescinding West Virginia's ratification of the ERA but this resolution has not yet been adopted by the West Virginia House.


title: Equal Rights Amendment

text: Among those rejecting Congress's claim to even hold authority to extend a previously established ratification deadline, the South Dakota Legislature adopted Senate Joint Resolution No. 2 on March 1, 1979. The joint resolution stipulated that South Dakota's 1973 ERA ratification would be "sunsetted" as of the original deadline, March 22, 1979. South Dakota's 1979 sunset joint resolution declared: "the Ninety-fifth Congress ex post facto has sought unilaterally to alter the terms and conditions in such a way as to materially affect the congressionally established time period for ratification" (designated as "POM-93" by the U.S. Senate and published verbatim in the Congressional Record of March 13, 1979, at pages 4861 and 4862).


title: Equal Rights Amendment

text: The action on the part of South Dakota lawmakers—occurring 21 days prior to originally agreed-upon deadline of March 22, 1979—could be viewed as slightly different from a rescission. notes that "[f]our states had rescinded their ratifications [of the ERA] and a fifth had declared that its ratification would be void unless the amendment was ratified within the original time limit", with a footnote identifying South Dakota as that "fifth" state.


title: Equal Rights Amendment

text: On March 19, 2021, North Dakota state lawmakers adopted Senate Concurrent Resolution No. 4010 to retroactively clarify that North Dakota's 1975 ratification of the ERA was valid only through "...11:59 p.m. on March 22, 1979..." and went on to proclaim that North Dakota "...should not be counted by Congress, the Archivist of the United States, lawmakers in any other state, any court of law, or any other person, as still having on record a live ratification of the proposed Equal Rights Amendment to the Constitution of the United States as was offered by House Joint Resolution No. 208 of the 92nd Congress on March 22, 1972..." The resolution was formally received by the U.S. Senate on April 20, 2021, was designated as "POM-10", was referred to the Senate's Judiciary Committee, and its full and complete verbatim text was published at page S2066 of the "Congressional Record".


title: Equal Rights Amendment

text: A resolution was introduced in the Minnesota Senate on January 11, 2021, which—if adopted—would retroactively clarify that Minnesota's 1973 ratification of the ERA expired as of the originally-designated March 22, 1979, deadline.


title: Equal Rights Amendment

text: At various times, in six of the 12 non-ratifying states, one house of the legislature approved the ERA. It failed in those states because both houses of a state's legislature must approve, during the same session, in order for that state to be deemed to have ratified.


title: Equal Rights Amendment

text: The original joint resolution (), by which the 92nd Congress proposed the amendment to the states, was prefaced by the following resolving clause:


title: Equal Rights Amendment

text: As the joint resolution was passed on March 22, 1972, this effectively set March 22, 1979 as the deadline for the amendment to be ratified by the requisite number of states. However, the 92nd Congress did not incorporate any time limit into the body of the actual text of the proposed amendment, as had been done with a number of other proposed amendments.


title: Equal Rights Amendment

text: In 1978, as the original 1979 deadline approached, the 95th Congress adopted , by Representative Elizabeth Holtzman of New York (House: August; Senate: October 6; signing of the President: October 20), which purported to extend the ERA's ratification deadline to June 30, 1982. H.J.Res. 638 received less than two-thirds of the vote (a simple majority, not a supermajority) in both the House of Representatives and the Senate; for that reason, ERA supporters deemed it necessary that H.J.Res. 638 be transmitted to then-President Jimmy Carter for signature as a safety precaution. The U.S. Supreme Court ruled in "Hollingsworth v. Virginia" (1798) that the President of the United States has no formal role in the passing of constitutional amendments. Carter signed the joint resolution, although he noted, on strictly procedural grounds, the irregularity of his doing so given the Supreme Court's decision in 1798. During this disputed extension of slightly more than three years, no additional states ratified or rescinded.


title: Equal Rights Amendment

text: The purported extension of ERA's ratification deadline was vigorously contested in 1978 as scholars were divided as to whether Congress actually has authority to revise a previously agreed-to deadline for the states to act upon a constitutional amendment. On June 18, 1980, a resolution in the Illinois House of Representatives resulted in a vote of 102–71 in favor, but Illinois' internal parliamentary rules required a three-fifths majority on constitutional amendments and so the measure failed by five votes. In 1982, seven female ERA supporters, known as the Grassroots Group of Second Class Citizens, went on a fast and seventeen chained themselves to the entrance of the Illinois Senate chamber. The closest that the ERA came to gaining an additional ratification between the original deadline of March 22, 1979, and the revised June 30, 1982, expiration date was when it was approved by the Florida House of Representatives on June 21, 1982. In the final week before the revised deadline, that ratifying resolution, however, was defeated in the Florida Senate by a vote of 16 to 22. Even if Florida had ratified the ERA, the proposed amendment would still have fallen short of the required 38. Many ERA supporters mourned the failure of the amendment. For example, a jazz funeral for the ERA was held in New Orleans in July 1982.


title: Equal Rights Amendment

text: According to research by Jules B. Gerard, professor of law at Washington University in St. Louis, of the 35 legislatures that passed ratification resolutions, 24 of them explicitly referred to the original 1979 deadline.


title: Equal Rights Amendment

text: On December 23, 1981, a federal district court, in the case of "Idaho v. Freeman", ruled that the extension of the ERA ratification deadline to June 30, 1982 was not valid, and that ERA had actually expired from state legislative consideration more than two years earlier on the original expiration date of March 22, 1979. On January 25, 1982, however, the U.S. Supreme Court stayed the lower court's decision.


title: Equal Rights Amendment

text: After the disputed June 30, 1982, extended deadline had come and gone, the Supreme Court, at the beginning of its new term, on October 4, 1982, in the separate case of "NOW v. Idaho", 459 U.S. 809 (1982), vacated the federal district court decision in "Idaho v. Freeman", which, in addition to declaring March 22, 1979, as ERA's expiration date, had upheld the validity of state rescissions. The Supreme Court declared these controversies moot based on the memorandum of the appellant Gerald P. Carmen, the then-Administrator of General Services, that the ERA had not received the required number of ratifications (38) and so "the Amendment has failed of adoption no matter what the resolution of the legal issues presented here."


title: Equal Rights Amendment

text: In the 1939 case of "Coleman v. Miller", the Supreme Court ruled that Congress has the final authority to determine whether, by lapse of time, a proposed constitutional amendment has lost its vitality before being ratified by enough states, and whether state ratifications are effective in light of attempts at subsequent withdrawal. The Court stated: "We think that, in accordance with this historic precedent, the question of the efficacy of ratifications by state legislatures, in the light of previous rejection or attempted withdrawal, should be regarded as a political question pertaining to the political departments, with the ultimate authority in the Congress in the exercise of its control over the promulgation of the adoption of the amendment."


title: Equal Rights Amendment

text: In the context of this judicial precedent, nonpartisan counsel to a Nevada state legislative committee concluded in 2017 that "If three more states sent their ratification to the appropriate federal official, it would then be up to Congress to determine whether a sufficient number of states have ratified the Equal Rights Amendment." In 2018, Virginia attorney general Mark Herring wrote an opinion suggesting that Congress could extend or remove the ratification deadline.


title: Equal Rights Amendment

text: On December 16, 2019, the states of Alabama, Louisiana and South Dakota sued to prevent further ratifying of the Equal Rights Amendment. Alabama Attorney General Steve Marshall stated, "The people had seven years to consider the ERA, and they rejected it. To sneak it into the Constitution through this illegal process would undermine the very basis for our constitutional order."


title: Equal Rights Amendment

text: On January 6, 2020, the Department of Justice Office of Legal Counsel official Steven Engel issued an opinion in response to the lawsuit by Alabama, Louisiana, and South Dakota, stating that "We conclude that Congress had the constitutional authority to impose a deadline on the ratification of the ERA and, because that deadline has expired, the ERA Resolution is no longer pending before the States." The OLC argued in part that Congress had the authority to impose a deadline for the ERA and that it did not have the authority to retroactively extend the deadline once it had expired.


title: Equal Rights Amendment

text: On February 27, 2020, the States of Alabama, Louisiana and South Dakota entered into a joint stipulation and voluntary dismissal with the Archivist of the United States. The joint stipulation incorporated the Department of Justice's Office of Legal Counsel's opinion; stated that the Archivist would not certify the adoption of the Equal Rights Amendment and stated that if the Department of Justice ever concludes that the 1972 ERA Resolution is still pending and that the Archivist therefore has authority to certify the ERA's adoption ... the Archivist will make no certification concerning ratification of the ERA until at least 45 days following the announcement of the Department of Justice's conclusion, absent a court order compelling him to do so sooner." On March 2, 2020, Federal District Court Judge L. Scott Coogler entered an order regarding the Joint Stipulation and Plaintiff's Voluntary Dismissal, granting the dismissal without prejudice.


title: Equal Rights Amendment

text: On January 7, 2020, a complaint was filed by Equal Means Equal, The Yellow Roses and Katherine Weitbrecht in the United States District Court for the District of Massachusetts against the Archivist of the United States seeking to have him count the three most recently ratifying states and certify the ERA as having become part of the United States Constitution. On August 6, 2020, Judge Denise Casper granted the Archivist's motion to dismiss, ruling that the plaintiffs did not have standing to sue to compel the Archivist to certify and so she could not rule on the merits of the case. On August 21, 2020, the plaintiffs appealed this decision to the United States Court of Appeals for the First Circuit and on September 2, 2020, the plaintiffs asked the Supreme Court to hear this case. Subsequently, the Supreme Court denied the request to intervene before the First Circuit gives its decision. On June 29, 2021, the First Circuit affirmed the District Court's decision that "the plaintiffs have not met their burden at the pleading stage with respect to those federal constitutional requirements, we affirm the order dismissing their suit for lack of standing." An "en banc" rehearing request was denied on January 4, 2022.


title: Equal Rights Amendment

text: On January 30, 2020, the attorneys general of Virginia, Illinois and Nevada filed a lawsuit to require the Archivist of the United States to "carry out his statutory duty of recognizing the complete and final adoption" of the ERA as the Twenty-eighth Amendment to the Constitution.


title: Equal Rights Amendment

text: On February 19, 2020, the States of Alabama, Louisiana, Nebraska, South Dakota and Tennessee moved to intervene in the case. On March 10, 2020, the Plaintiff States (Virginia, Illinois and Nevada) filed a memorandum in opposition to the five states seeking to intervene. On May 7, 2020, the DOJ filed a motion to dismiss, claiming the states do not have standing to bring the case to trial as they have to show any "concrete injury", nor that the case was ripe for review.


title: Equal Rights Amendment

text: On June 12, 2020, the District Court granted the Intervening states (Alabama, Louisiana, Nebraska, South Dakota and Tennessee) motion to intervene in the case. On March 5, 2021, federal judge Rudolph Contreras of the United States District Court for the District of Columbia ruled that the ratification period for the ERA "expired long ago" and that three states' recent ratifications had come too late to be counted in the amendment's favor. On May 3, 2021, the plaintiff states appealed the ruling to the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit. Virginia withdrew from the lawsuit in February 2022. Oral arguments were held on September 28, 2022, before a panel composed by judges Wilkins, Rao and Childs.


title: Equal Rights Amendment

text: Supporters of the ERA point to the lack of a specific guarantee in the Constitution for equal rights protections on the basis of sex. In 1973, future Supreme Court justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg summarized a supporting argument for the ERA in the "American Bar Association Journal":The equal rights amendment, in sum, would dedicate the nation to a new view of the rights and responsibilities of men and women. It firmly rejects sharp legislative lines between the sexes as constitutionally tolerable. Instead, it looks toward a legal system in which each person will be judged on the basis of individual merit and not on the basis of an unalterable trait of birth that bears no necessary relationship to need or ability.


title: Equal Rights Amendment

text: Later, Ginsburg voiced her opinion that the best course of action on the Equal Rights Amendment is to start over, due to being past its expiration date. While at a discussion at Georgetown University in February 2020, Ginsburg noted the challenge that "if you count a latecomer on the plus side, how can you disregard states that said 'we've changed our minds?'"


title: Equal Rights Amendment

text: In the early 1940s, both the Democratic and Republican parties added support for the ERA to their platforms.


title: Equal Rights Amendment

text: The National Organization for Women (NOW) and ERAmerica, a coalition of almost 80 organizations, led the pro-ERA efforts. Between 1972 and 1982, ERA supporters held rallies, petitioned, picketed, went on hunger strikes, and performed acts of civil disobedience. On July 9, 1978, NOW and other organizations hosted a national march in Washington, D.C., which garnered over 100,000 supporters, and was followed by a Lobby Day on July 10. On June 6, 1982, NOW sponsored marches in states that had not passed the ERA including Florida, Illinois, North Carolina, and Oklahoma. Key feminists of the time, such as Gloria Steinem, spoke out in favor of the ERA, arguing that ERA opposition was based on gender myths that overemphasized difference and ignored evidence of unequal treatment between men and women. A more militant feminist group, Grassroots Group of Second Class Citizens, organized a series of non-violent direct action tactics in support of the ERA in Illinois in 1982.


title: Equal Rights Amendment

text: Many African-American women have supported the ERA. One prominent female supporter was New York representative Shirley Chisholm. On August 10, 1970, she gave a speech on the ERA called "For the Equal Rights Amendment" in Washington, D.C. In her address, she claimed that sex discrimination had become widespread and that the ERA would remedy it. She also claimed that laws to protect women in the workforce from unsafe working conditions would be needed by men, too, and thus the ERA would help all people.


title: Equal Rights Amendment

text: By 1976, 60% of African-American women and 63% of African-American men were in favor of the ERA, and the legislation was supported by organizations such as the NAACP, National Council of Negro Women, Coalition of Black Trade Unionists, National Association of Negro Business, and the National Black Feminist Organization.


title: Equal Rights Amendment

text: Many Republican women supported the ERA including Florence Dwyer, Jill Ruckelshaus, Mary Dent Crisp, Justice Sandra Day O'Connor, First Lady Betty Ford and Senator Margaret Chase Smith. Support from Republican men included President Dwight D. Eisenhower, President Richard Nixon, Senator Richard Lugar and Senator Strom Thurmond.


title: Equal Rights Amendment

text: Opponents of the ERA focused on traditional gender roles, such as how men do the fighting in wartime. They argued that the amendment would guarantee the possibility that women would be subject to conscription and be required to have military combat roles in future wars if it were passed. Defense of traditional gender roles proved to be a useful tactic. In Illinois, supporters of Phyllis Schlafly, a conservative Republican activist from that state, used traditional symbols of the American housewife. They took homemade bread, jams, and apple pies to the state legislators, with the slogans, "Preserve us from a Congressional jam; Vote against the ERA sham" and "I am for Mom and apple pie." They appealed to married women by stressing that the amendment would invalidate protective laws such as alimony and eliminate the tendency for mothers to obtain custody over their children in divorce cases. It was suggested that single-sex bathrooms would be eliminated and same-sex couples would be able to get married if the amendment were passed. Women who supported traditional gender roles started to oppose the ERA. Schlafly said passage of the amendment would threaten Social Security benefits for housewives. Opponents also argued that men and women were already equal enough with the passage of the Equal Pay Act of 1963 and the Civil Rights Act of 1964, and that women's colleges would have to admit men. Schlafly's argument that protective laws would be lost resonated with working-class women.


title: Equal Rights Amendment

text: At the 1980 Republican National Convention, the Republican Party platform was amended to end its support for the ERA. The most prominent opponent of the ERA was Schlafly. Leading the Stop ERA campaign, Schlafly defended traditional gender roles and would often attempt to incite feminists by opening her speeches with lines such as, "I'd like to thank my husband for letting me be here tonight—I always like to say that, because it makes the libs so mad." When Schlafly began her campaign in 1972, public polls showed support for the amendment was widely popular and thirty states had ratified the amendment by 1973. After 1973, the number of ratifying states slowed to a trickle. Support in the states that had not ratified fell below 50%. Public opinion in key states shifted against the ERA as its opponents, operating on the local and state levels, won over the public. The state legislators in battleground states followed public opinion in rejecting the ERA.


title: Equal Rights Amendment

text: Phyllis Schlafly was a key player in the defeat. Political scientist Jane Mansbridge in her history of the ERA argues that the draft issue was the single most powerful argument used by Schlafly and the other opponents to defeat ERA. Mansbridge concluded, "Many people who followed the struggle over the ERA believed—rightly in my view—that the Amendment would have been ratified by 1975 or 1976 had it not been for Phyllis Schlafly's early and effective effort to organize potential opponents." Legal scholar Joan C. Williams maintained, "ERA was defeated when Schlafly turned it into a war among women over gender roles." Historian Judith Glazer-Raymo asserted:


title: Equal Rights Amendment

text: As moderates, we thought we represented the forces of reason and goodwill but failed to take seriously the power of the family values argument and the single-mindedness of Schlafly and her followers. The ERA's defeat seriously damaged the women's movement, destroying its momentum and its potential to foment social change... Eventually, this resulted in feminist dissatisfaction with the Republican Party, giving the Democrats a new source of strength that when combined with overwhelming minority support, helped elect Bill Clinton to the presidency in 1992 and again in 1996.


title: Equal Rights Amendment

text: The John Birch Society and its members organized opposition to the ERA in multiple states. According to Professor Edward H. Miller, it played a key role in addition to Schlafly in preventing the amendment’s ratification.


title: Equal Rights Amendment

text: Many ERA supporters blamed their defeat on special interest forces, especially the insurance industry and conservative organizations, suggesting that they had funded an opposition that subverted the democratic process and the will of the pro-ERA majority. Such supporters argued that while the public face of the anti-ERA movement was Phyllis Schlafly and her STOP ERA organization, there were other important groups in the opposition as well, such as the powerful National Council of Catholic Women, labor feminists and (until 1973) the AFL–CIO. Steinem blamed the insurance industry and said Schlafly "did not change one vote." Opposition to the amendment was particularly high among religious conservatives, who argued that the amendment would guarantee universal abortion rights and the right for homosexual couples to marry. Critchlow and Stachecki say the anti-ERA movement was based on strong backing among Southern whites, Evangelical Christians, members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, Orthodox Jews, and Roman Catholics, including both men and women.


title: Equal Rights Amendment

text: The ERA has long been opposed by anti-abortion groups who believe it would be interpreted to allow legal abortion without limits and taxpayer funding for abortion.


title: Equal Rights Amendment

text: Beginning in the mid-1990s, ERA supporters began an effort to win ratification of the ERA by the legislatures of states that did not ratify it between 1972 and 1982. These proponents state that Congress can remove the ERA's ratification deadline despite the deadline having expired, allowing the states again to ratify it. They also state that the ratifications ERA previously received remain in force and that rescissions of prior ratifications are not valid. Those who espouse the "three-state strategy" (now complete if the Nevada, Illinois and Virginia belated ERA approvals are deemed legitimate) were spurred, at least in part, by the unconventional 202-year-long ratification of the Constitution's Twenty-seventh Amendment (sometimes referred to as the "Madison Amendment") which became part of the Constitution in 1992 after pending before the state legislatures since 1789. However, the "Madison Amendment" was not associated with a ratification deadline, whereas the proposing clause of the ERA did include a deadline.


title: Equal Rights Amendment

text: On June 21, 2009, the National Organization for Women decided to support both efforts to obtain additional state ratifications for the 1972 ERA and any strategy to submit a fresh-start ERA to the states for ratification.


title: Equal Rights Amendment

text: In 2013, the Library of Congress's Congressional Research Service issued a report saying that ratification deadlines are a political question: The report goes on to say:


title: Equal Rights Amendment

text: However, most recently, ERA Action has both led and brought renewed vigor to the movement by instituting what has become known as the "three-state strategy". In 2013, ERA Action began to gain traction with this strategy through their coordination with U.S. Senators and Representatives not only to introduce legislation in both houses of Congress to remove the ratification deadline, but also in gaining legislative sponsors. The Congressional Research Service then issued a report on the "three state strategy" on April 8, 2013, entitled "The Proposed Equal Rights Amendment: Contemporary Ratification Issues", stating that the approach was viable.


title: Equal Rights Amendment

text: In 2014, under the auspices of ERA Action and their coalition partners, both the Virginia and Illinois state senates voted to ratify the ERA. That year, votes were blocked in both states' House chambers. In the meantime, the ERA ratification movement continued with the resolution being introduced in 10 state legislatures.


title: Equal Rights Amendment

text: Illinois lawmakers and citizens took another look at the ERA, with hearings, testimony, and research including work by the law firm Winston & Strawn to address common legal questions about the ERA.


title: Equal Rights Amendment

text: Illinois state lawmakers ratified the ERA on May 30, 2018, with a 72–45 vote in the Illinois House following a 43–12 vote in the Illinois Senate in April 2018.


title: Equal Rights Amendment

text: An effort to ratify the ERA in the Virginia General Assembly in 2018 failed to reach the floor of either the House of Delegates or Senate. In 2019, a Senate committee voted to advance the ERA to the floor. On January 15, the Senate voted 26–14 to approve the amendment and forward it to the House of Delegates, but it was defeated there in a 50–50 tied vote; at the time, the Republican Party held one-seat majorities in both houses. After the 2019 elections in Virginia gave the Democratic Party majority control of both houses of the Virginia legislature, the incoming leaders expressed their intent to hold another vote on ratification early in the 2020 legislative session. Keeping to their word, they did so, with ERA ratification resolutions HJ1 and SJ1 being passed in their respective chambers on January 15, 2020, and being passed by each other on January 27.


title: Equal Rights Amendment

text: The amendment has been reintroduced in every session of Congress since 1982. Senator Ted Kennedy (D-Massachusetts) championed it in the Senate from the 99th Congress through the 110th Congress. Senator Robert Menendez (D-New Jersey) introduced the amendment symbolically at the end of the 111th Congress and has supported it in the 112th Congress. In the House of Representatives, Carolyn Maloney (D-New York) has sponsored it since the 105th Congress, most recently in August 2013.


title: Equal Rights Amendment

text: In 1983, the ERA passed through House committees with the same text as in 1972; however, it failed by six votes to achieve the necessary two-thirds vote on the House floor. That was the last time that the ERA received a floor vote in either house of Congress.


title: Equal Rights Amendment

text: At the start of the 112th Congress on January 6, 2011, Senator Menendez, along with representatives Maloney, Jerrold Nadler (D-New York) and Gwen Moore (D-Wisconsin), held a press conference advocating for the Equal Rights Amendment's adoption.


title: Equal Rights Amendment

text: The 113th Congress had a record number of women. On March 5, 2013, the ERA was reintroduced by Senator Menendez as S.J. Res. 10.


title: Equal Rights Amendment

text: The "New ERA" introduced in 2013, sponsored by Representative Carolyn B. Maloney, adds an additional sentence to the original text: "Women shall have equal rights in the United States and every place subject to its jurisdiction."