Meryl Streep urges Congress to back equal rights amendment

• Hollywood star sends letter and book calling for constitutional change
• Streep to play Emmeline Pankhurst in forthcoming film Suffragette

Meryl Streep sent a letter to each member of Congress, saying: ‘I am writing to ask you to stand up for equality … by actively supporting the equal rights amendment.’ Photograph: Shuji Kajiyama/AP

Movie star

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sent a letter to each member of Congress on Tuesday urging them to revive the battle to add the equal rights amendment, guaranteeing parity for women under the law, into the US constitution.

Streep will be seen on screen in October

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.

Meanwhile she is stepping up her feminist activism off screen and dispatched a package with a book and letter to all members of Congress on Tuesday, the day after her 66th birthday.

“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,” Streep writes.

Each packet includes a copy of Equal Means Equal, a book by Jessica Neuwirth, president of the ERA Coalition, which campaigns to update the US constitution to include the amendment prohibiting discrimination against women and girls under the law.

Streep whooped and waved her arms at the 2015 Oscars when best supporting actress winner Patricia Arquette called for equal pay and rights for women during her

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.

And in 2014 she

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cartoon icon Walt Disney a “gender bigot”.

The

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was written in 1920, shortly after women were given the vote in the US.

It was introduced unsuccessfully in every legislative year in Congress from 1923 until it was finally passed in 1972.

It was sent to each state for ratification but by 1982, despite an extension of the traditional deadline for ratification, it was three states short of the minimum of 38 needed to add it to the constitution and the issue stalled.

Hold-out states included Arizona, Nevada and Utah in the west, and a large area of the south and deep south.

Various campaigns to revive the attempt via Congress again since 1982 have failed.

But Streep has now chosen to put her global fame and stature and her personal politics behind a new push.

She has been nominated for 19 Academy Awards, a record.

She won her third Oscar in 2012 for her portrayal of Margaret Thatcher, who broke ground by being Britain’s first female prime minister, but then became known for surrounding herself in government with men and making little effort to promote the cause of other women.

When Thatcher died in 2013, Streep issued a

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calling her “a pioneer, willing or unwilling, for the role of women in politics”.

Now she is to embody the Pankhurst legend, the quintessential family name associated with the fight for women’s suffrage in the early the 20th century.

Britain passed legislation in 1918 giving some women the right to vote for the first time and women won the right to vote on the same terms as men in 1928.

The British film Suffragette is directed by Sarah Gavron and has its world premiere at the London Film Festival in October.

The American Civil Liberties Union last month issued a

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that said the US movie business was so sexist it should be investigated for legal civil liberties violations. It highlighted in particular the lack of female directors at Hollywood level, despite them being plentiful in college film-making programs and film festivals featuring nascent movie professionals.

Streep’s latest move in writing to Congress takes the battle for equality off the screen and beyond the film industry to the cause of women’s equality more universally.

Lawmakers from both sides of the aisle regularly try to restart the process of adding the ERA to the constitution, but as yet without success.

The amendment says that: “Equality of rights under the law shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of sex.”

Streep’s letter says: “A whole new generation of women and girls are talking about equality – equal pay, equal protection from sexual assault, equal rights.”

California congresswoman Jackie Speier, a Democrat, added her support.

“The time is ripe to ratify the equal rights amendment. Seventy percent of people polled think that we already have an ERA in the constitution and they’re shocked to find we don’t have one,” she said.