Pass the eraIf you love gender equality and can’t get enough of clever internet memes, then the #passtheERA campaign is perfect for you.
The digital initiative wants to wipe the dust off an old idea and make it feel fresh to a generation that may not realize gender equality isn’t enshrined in the nation’s Constitution.
It plans to do this by appealing to younger Americans in their native language: memes.One image features Supreme Court justice and feminist hero Ruth Bader Ginsburg with a small asterisk in the corner that reads: “is not equal to men in the eyes of the law.” Another image simply presents the text: “Dear Thomas Jefferson, you forgot something.”
With more than three dozen memes and images, the campaign aims take on gender inequality with irreverence, humor, and wit. It also hopes to go viral.
The project is meant to draw attention to the Equal Rights Amendment, the nearly century-old language that would declare the sexes equal in the eyes of the law. Congress passed the amendment in 1972, and a majority of states had to ratify it within a decade. By 1982, the deadline passed with the amendment just three states short of ratification.
Since then, the ERA lost its prominence but never its champions. Legislators re-introduce the amendment every session in Congress. The ERA Coalition, which advocates for the amendment’s adoption, has 50 nonprofit partners, and dozens of celebrity supporters like Ashley Judd, Jane Fonda, and Joss Whedon.
The ERA even went viral in 2015 when Patricia Arquette
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