Phyllis Schlafly

In 1972 the Equal Rights Amendment sailed out of Congress with lopsided majorities and seemed certain to be written into the Constitution within a few years. A decade later it was dead, three states short of ratification. The single person most responsible for that reversal never held elected office. Phyllis Schlafly, a lawyer and writer from Illinois, built a grassroots campaign that turned a near-consensus into one of the fiercest culture-war battles of the era.

She had been a force in conservative politics long before. Her 1964 self-published book A Choice Not an Echo, a manifesto for the Barry Goldwater wing of the Republican Party, sold millions of copies and helped pull the party rightward. A frequent candidate and constant organizer, she wrote on defense and foreign policy and assembled a national network of activists through her newsletter and, later, the Eagle Forum, the organization she founded in 1975 and led for the rest of her life.

Her STOP ERA campaign argued that the amendment would strip women of protections they valued — exemption from the military draft, alimony and child custody preferences, single-sex spaces — and warned that it would lead to women in combat and the erosion of the traditional family. Critics noted the irony of a Harvard-trained lawyer and tireless public figure urging other women to prize the role of homemaker, and feminists viewed her as the chief obstacle to legal equality. Yet she mobilized conservative and religious women into a political bloc that few had thought existed, and the amendment stalled.

That mobilization outlasted the ERA fight. Schlafly helped knit together the coalition of social and religious conservatives that powered Ronald Reagan's rise and reshaped the Republican Party, championing opposition to abortion and to what she cast as feminist overreach. She remained active into her nineties, endorsing Donald Trump shortly before her death in 2016. Admirers credit her with proving the political muscle of organized conservative women, while opponents hold her responsible for stalling a constitutional guarantee of equal rights.