No actor or actress can match Meryl Streep's 19 Academy Award nominations, and only Katharine Hepburn has bested her three Oscars for acting. So maybe it's conceivable that Streep's letter Tuesday to each member of Congress can somehow revive the Equal Rights Amendment, politically dormant since its high-water mark four decades ago.
"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.
Congress passed the Equal Rights Amendment in 1972. Over the next decade, 35 states ratified it, three short of the 38 needed to add it to the Constitution.
Conservative opposition and other factors halted its momentum. They have helped relegate the ERA to America's political backburners ever since. Still, lawmakers from both parties regularly try to restart the process.