Following ratification of the 19th Amendment, which secured voting rights for women in 1920, suffragist Alice Paul drafted a constitutional amendment to guarantee equality for women in all areas of the law. Paul's Equal Rights Amendment was introduced in Congress in 1923 and reintroduced in every succeeding Congress until it finally passed both chambers in 1972. When the congressionally mandated deadline for ratification expired in 1982, 35 states had ratified it—three states short of the three-fourths required.