After winning suffrage, the National Woman's Party pursued passage of the Equal Rights Amendment introduced in 1923, seeking the legal equality between men and women envisioned at the 1848 Women's Rights Convention at Seneca Falls. Nearly 50 years later, Congress passed the ERA in 1972, but it failed to win ratification in the required 38 states before the 1982 deadline, although ratification efforts continued. From the 1920s, the National Woman's Party also worked for federal laws expanding women's legal rights, and when the Civil Rights Act of 1964 was proposed, Alice Paul and others successfully urged the inclusion of sex discrimination, leading to equal employment opportunity under Title 7 and equal educational opportunity at institutions receiving federal funds under Title 9. Carrie Chapman Catt worked on peace initiatives and international women's suffrage, Alice Paul helped ensure that women's equal rights were incorporated into the founding documents of the United Nations, and Eleanor Roosevelt played a primary role in adoption of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in 1948, which included women's rights. Suffragists from many backgrounds created a peaceful political revolution within a constitutional framework, winning voting rights for more than half the population after 72 years of struggle marked by ridicule, marginalization, imprisonment, and risks to their lives and reputations. The ratification of the 19th Amendment, which prohibited denying or abridging the right to vote on account of sex, marked the greatest expansion of democracy in a single day for the nation, changed the course of American history, and helped empower women from all backgrounds to participate more fully in politics and civic life. Yet the equal rights envisioned at Seneca Falls are still not guaranteed by the U.S. Constitution, and discrimination against women does not receive the strict scrutiny standard applied there to race and religion.
