09/18/2026
Constitution Day marks the signing of the U.S. Constitution on September 17, 1787.
No women were among the delegates who drafted or signed the Constitution that day, but women have been part of shaping our nation’s founding principles and expanding who is represented by “We the People” from the beginning.
Women have always been Constitution Makers.
During the Revolutionary era, women helped shape the political ideas and public discourse of the emerging nation, even as they were excluded from formal political power. Mary Katharine Goddard, a printer and postmaster, printed the first official copy of the Declaration of Independence to include the names of its signers. She placed her own name at the bottom.
More than a century later, women led the movement that secured the 19th Amendment, fundamentally changing the Constitution and expanding voting rights for women.
Alice Paul knew the work was unfinished. In 1923, she authored the Equal Rights Amendment to establish explicit constitutional equality regardless of s*x.
Today, women still do not have explicit equal protection on the basis of s*x written into the U.S. Constitution. The ERA has been ratified by 38 states, meeting the three-fourths threshold outlined in Article V, yet its publication and legal recognition remain contested.
On Constitution Day, we are thinking not only about who wrote the Constitution in 1787, but also about the generations of women who have fought to make it more representative of “We the People.”
What do you think is the biggest barrier to the publication and implementation of the Equal Rights Amendment today?
Photo: National Woman’s Party Collection, Library of Congress
