Democratizing America’s Lawmaking Institutions: Why Feminists Should Stop Waiting for Congress and the Court

A feminist pro-democracy agenda must include new lawmaking institutions that can ensure our democracy is more inclusive, more democratic, more representative, and more responsive to the needs of all the people who call America home.

The past decade has brought two major failures of existing institutions to establish the basic requirements of non-patriarchal democracy: Congress’ failure to add the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA) to the U.S. Constitution and the Supreme Court’s failure to guard women’s constitutional right to control their reproductive lives. After calling out these outrages and trying to reverse them for years, it’s time for feminists to confront the deeper causes of these failures: the dysfunctional lawmaking institutions that were created by the Constitution over 200 years ago to govern the nation.

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