Read the excerpt from Representative Shirley Chisholm’s speech on equal rights for women. Mr. Speaker, House Joint Resolution 264, before us today, which provides for equality under the law for both men and women, represents one of the most clear-cut opportunities we are likely to have to declare our faith in the principles that shaped our Constitution. It provides a legal basis for attack on the most subtle, most pervasive, and most institutionalized form of prejudice that exists. Discrimination against women, solely on the basis of their sex, is so widespread that it seems to many persons normal, natural and right.

–Equal rights speech,
Shirley Chisholm

Why did the Equal Rights Amendment fail?

Most people believed that women were not equal to men.
Many feared that the amendment would create a unisex society.
The law was unnecessary since women already had equality.
Social liberalism was not a powerful belief system in the late 1960s.