Paul, Alice (1885-1977), became one of the first American leaders of the movement for equal rights for women . She is sometimes called the mother of the proposed Equal Rights Amendment to the United States Constitution .
Alice Stokes Paul was born on Jan. 11, 1885, in Moorestown, New Jersey. She received a Ph.D. degree in sociology from the University of Pennsylvania in 1912 and earned three law degrees during the 1920’s. From 1907 to 1910, Paul worked with British women in their struggle to obtain the right to vote. After returning to the United States, she organized protest marches calling for the government to grant voting rights to women. The 19th Amendment, which gave women the right to vote, became part of the Constitution in 1920.
In 1913, Paul formed the National Woman’s Party, which supported equal rights for women. She submitted the first version of the Equal Rights Amendment to Congress in 1923. Paul worked with international women’s organizations in the 1930’s. In 1938, she founded the World Woman’s Party (WWP), headquartered in Geneva, Switzerland. The WWP worked closely with the League of Nations , a forerunner of the United Nations (UN) , for the inclusion of gender equality into the UN Charter and the establishment of the UN Commission on the Status of Women. Paul moved back to the United States in 1941 and became active in American women’s issues. She led a coalition that was successful in adding a sexual discrimination clause to Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 . Paul died on July 9, 1977.
