40 Ducere Est Servire: THE LEADERSHIP JOURNAL OF DALLAS BAPTIST UNIVERSITY Committee’s control, Congress could now vote on the ERA. In 1972, after two years of debate and changes in wording, both houses of Congress passed the Equal Rights Amendment and sent it to the states for ratification.62 Between 1972 and 1982, proponents and opponents of the amendment battled for the future of women’s rights. Finally, with only three states standing in the way of ratification, the ERA failed. The ERA: An Adaptive Challenge Viewing the battle over the Equal Rights Amendment as an adaptive challenge brings context and understanding to its complicated history of acceptance and rejection. Ronald Heifetz defines an adaptive challenge as a “particular kind of problem where the gap cannot be closed by the application of current technical know-how or routine behavior.”63 Historically, state laws allowed for the discrimination of women, and lawyers interpreted those laws as protection for women.64 For example, due to a husband’s status as the financial provider, property acquired during a marriage belonged to the husband, and he bore the responsibility of financially providing for his wife.65 The battle over the Equal Rights Amendment and the popularity of Betty Friedan’s book, The Feminine Mystique, brought these glaring disparities to Congress’ attention. Though the ERA passed in the Senate on March 22, 1972, thirty-eight states needed to ratify it to amend the Constitution.66 The hard work of ratification was now underway. Due to the positive messaging of the women’s movement, the Equal Rights Amendment originally had bipartisan support. Thirty states ratified the amendment during its first year, and the ERA proponents assumed they would meet the seven-year ratification requirement. However, by 1973, “the ERA’s proponents had lost control of the ratification process.”67 This failure left proponents of the ERA asking: Why had a seemingly popular amendment failed to gain support from the American public? Although pro-ERA groups successfully lobbied for the Equal Rights Amendment in Congress, they discovered they had not adequately prepared the states or the American public to understand the amendment’s components. Therefore, conservative groups, led by Phyllis Schlafly and Beverly LaHaye, capitalized on this mistake and negatively framed the amendment.68
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