Proposed amendment to the US constitution to the effect that “equality of rights under the law shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of sex.” Passed easily by Congress in 1972, but intense lobbying followed and not enough states ratified by the 1979 deadline. As of 2020, the required 38 states have ratified the amendment, but there is legal debate as to the effect of the deadline.
Interestingly, many ERA proponents (including Gloria Steinem) regard the insurance industry as one of their most significant adversaries,1 seemingly because the industry does not want to lose sex as a pricing variable.
Donald T. Critchlow and Cynthia L. Stachecki, “The Equal Rights Amendment Reconsidered: Politics, Policy, and Social Mobilization in a Democracy,” Journal of Policy History 20, no. 1 (2008): 157–76, https://doi.org/10.1353/jph.0.0000.