By Janet Perez | Arizona Capitol Times
After beating the rest of the country in giving women the right to vote, Arizona has trailed the pack in passing the Equal Rights Amendment.
Arizona women led the charge for the right to vote in 1912, the year the territory became a state — and a full eight years before the rest of the nation granted women the vote. In 1923, it would seem an easy victory for Arizona women when the first effort to get the Equal Rights Amendment into the U.S. Constitution was introduced.
Ninety-seven years later the fight goes on.
“We have made great progress, but that progress could be overturned and reversed and is being overturned and reversed constantly, and so the only way to assure this is to put it into the Constitution,” Sen. Victoria Steele, D-Tucson, said.
Nationwide interest in the ERA was re-kindled during the 1970s and 1980s, a byproduct of the “second wave” of the women’s right movement.
