{"id":709,"date":"2018-12-10T06:33:30","date_gmt":"2018-12-10T06:33:30","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/brie.hunter.cuny.edu\/hunterathenian\/?p=709"},"modified":"2018-12-12T21:48:34","modified_gmt":"2018-12-12T21:48:34","slug":"as-era-movement-gains-momentum-prominent-womens-equality-activist-joins-roosevelt-house","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/brie.hunter.cuny.edu\/hunterathenian\/2018\/12\/as-era-movement-gains-momentum-prominent-womens-equality-activist-joins-roosevelt-house\/","title":{"rendered":"Fighting for women\u2019s rights: ERA activist joins Roosevelt House"},"content":{"rendered":"
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This semester, Jessica Neuwirth joins the Roosevelt House as director of the Human Rights Program.\u00a0Photo courtesy of Roosevelt House.<\/figcaption> Photo by Roosevelt House<\/span><\/figure>\n

Since high school, Jessica Neuwirth has been passionate about human rights. She\u2019s led a legal team convicting a Liberian president of war crimes. She helped hold the media accountable for its actions during the Rwandan genocide. She was also a consultant for a landmark judgment ruling that rape is a form of genocide. But it wasn\u2019t until five years ago that she discovered one of the most important callings in her human rights career\u2014ratifying the Equal Rights Amendment.<\/p>\n

As the new director of the Human Rights Program<\/a> at the Roosevelt House, Neuwirth comes to Hunter with years of firsthand experience in the movement to guarantee women equality under the law.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat motivates me is a sense of outrage over the fact that we don’t have constitutional equality for women in 2018,\u201d said Neuwirth. \u201cIt just seems to me that we’re so far behind the rest of the world.\u201d<\/p>\n

The ERA, which fell short of ratification in 1982, has seen new momentum in the age of #MeToo and the recent upsurge in women\u2019s activism. It is now just one state away from having the required number needed to be adopted to the Constitution if it is passed in Congress.<\/p>\n

Central to this success is the ERA Coalition<\/a>, an organization co-founded by Neuwirth that uses education and outreach to push for ratification of the ERA. Neuwirth, who continues to serve as its president, started the organization to \u201creally help build a national coalition to say, \u2018listen, we don’t have this, we need it, we want it, and we want it now.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n