Meryl Streep is fed up with inequality, and has taken action by writing a letter to the U.S. Congress urging the federal lawmakers to revive the Equal Rights Amendment, a proposed amendment to the Constitution which would guarantee equal rights for women, but has been dormant for four decades.
“I am writing to ask you to stand up for equality – for your mother, your daughter, your sister, your wife or yourself – by actively supporting the Equal Rights Amendment,”; the Oscar-winning actress wrote in her letter, sent to members of Congress along with a copy of Equal Means Equal, by ERA Coalition leader Jessica Neuwirth.
“The ERA is not just a women’s rights issue,”; she added, “it will have a meaningful benefit for the whole human family.”;
America’s Congress passed the Equal Rights Amendment in 1972, and over the course of the next decade it was ratified by 35 states, three shy of the 38 required to add it to the Constitution; the amendment has been on the political back-burner ever since.
The proposed amendment states: “Equality of rights under the law shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of sex.”;
The time for this amendment, writes Streep, has arrived. “A whole new generation of women and girls are talking about equality,”; she writes in her letter. “Equal pay, equal protection from sexual assault, equal rights.”;
The ERA Coalition was founded last year as a way of building wider public support for this constitutional amendment, with Streep joined by an array of fellow supporters including former President Jimmy Carter, Chelsea Handler, Rashida Jones, Jane Fonda, Tavis Smiley, Taylor Schilling, Lily Tomlin, Sam Waterston and Gloria Steinem.
“I am adding my voice to the long term efforts of others in the campaign to have the rights of the majority of Americans,”; says Streep in her letter, “who were not considered equal citizens by the framers of the Constitution, included and secured by virtue of an Amendment.”;
