Robynne: demanding that Congress pass the Three-State Strategy Bill

I helped found a women's rights club at my middle school, and now my classmates and I are standing up for equality. Sign our petition asking Congress to pass a bill that will help ratify the Equal Rights Amendment. Sign Robynne’s petition National Black – My parents have always taught me that I can be whatever I want when I grow up, but recently I learned something shocking in a class at my middle school: according to our Constitution, women do not have equal rights to men under the law. When my friends and I learned this in our “Girls in Government, Leadership, and Service" club, we were heartbroken.We had no idea that after all this time, the laws in our country still don’t give us the same protection as our brothers and male peers. When we grow up, we want to have the same opportunities as men, get paid the same for the work we do, and be treated equally in society. Luckily, there is a proposed amendment to our Constitution, the Equal Rights Amendment, that would make that a reality. That amendment is already really close to passing, but unfortunately over the past few years it has been stuck in limbo. That is why we started a petition asking Congress to pass the Three State Strategy bill, which will get the ERA moving again and bring us one step closer to real equality. Will you sign? To adopt a new constitutional amendment, Congress must approve it, and then it must be ratified by three fourths of the states – that’s 38 in total. It was ratified by 35 states before hitting its deadline in 1982. If the Three-State Strategy bill passes, the ERA would only need three more states’ ratification to be added to our Constitution! That means women would finally be granted equal protection to men under the law. Luckily, similar bills have helped Constitutional amendments come out of hibernation in the past. In fact, the most recent amendment ratified to our constitution was added over 200 years after it was was first introduced! This issue is so important to me and my classmates because women still only make between $0.57 and $0.88 for every dollar that men make in the same job.Over the span of a woman’s career, she stands to make a million dollars less than a man in the same position. If the ERA was added to our Constitution, this would no longer be true. The teachers at our all-girls’ school try hard to give us confidence – in ourselves and our skills, in our ability to be whatever we want when we grow up. I’m heading off to high school next year, and I want so badly to know that as I get older I will have the same opportunities as my other classmates. But some of the stuff I’ve learned about gender discrimination is so disheartening. We still have far to go, but the ERA would do so much to help us get there. Please join me and my friends in demanding that Congress pass the Three-State Strategy Bill, so that the Equal Rights Amendment may finally be added to our Constitution. Thank you, Robynne Oliver, age 14Oakland, California