Meryl Streep Appealing To Congress To Revive Equal Rights Amendment

Meryl Streep recently celebrated her 66^th birthday and while she may have enjoyed the special day with her friends and loved ones, she also decided to step up her feminist activism by sending a letter to Congress to revive the Equal Rights Amendment.

According to The Guardian, the movie star sent a small package which contains a book and a letter to all members of the Congress on Tuesday, just a day after Streep’s birthday. Her letter urges the Congress to support the Equal Rights Amendment. “I am writing to ask you to stand up for equality – for your mother, your daughter, your sister, your wife or yourself – by actively supporting the equal rights amendment,” wrote the actress.

Each package also contained a copy of ‘Equal Means Equal’, a book by the president of the ERA Coalition Jessica Neuwirth, which campaigns to include the amendment prohibiting discrimination against women and girls under the law, into the US constitution.

The Equal Rights Amendment was written in 1920, after women received the right to vote. It was introduced to unsuccessfully in Congress every year from 1923 onwards, until it was finally passed in 1972. In 1982 it fell short by three states to be added to the Constitution. Since then, various campaigns to revive the amendment have failed. The amendment simply states, "Equality of rights under the law shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of sex."

The multi-awarded actress has been rallying for equality all year. Streep even gave Patricia Arquette a standing ovation at the 2015 Oscars when she called for equal pay and rights for women during her acceptance speech, states E!News. "To every woman who gave birth, to every taxpayer and citizen of this nation, we have fought for everybody else's equal rights," Arquette said. "It's our time to have wage equality once and for all and equal rights for women in the United States of America."

During Streep’s conversation with Michelle Obama in More magazine’s July/August 2015 issue, the actress also passionately shared her cause with the First Lady, saying, “We’re viewed as equals—but we’re still not there yet… The challenge for our girls, I think, is dealing with that resistance,” Streep continues. “How can we lift and defuse it, how do we make it so our equality is not so threatening?”

Meryl Streep will co-star in the upcoming British drama Suffragette, where she plays Emmeline Pankhurst, the militant activist credited for founding the Women’s Social and Political Union. She also has been using her own money to combat sexism in Hollywood by funding a screenwriting lab for women.

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