Button, ERA is for Everyone, Sally Ride

This "ERA is for Everyone" button was owned by Dr. Sally K. Ride. The Equal Rights Amendment (ERA) was introduced to Congress for the first time in 1923, and passed both houses of Congress in 1972. It failed, however, to be ratified by the necessary number of states by the extended deadline of June 1982. Ride followed the ERA campaign, and would stop patronizing companies if she knew that they did not support the ERA. When Ride became the first American woman in space during the STS-7 mission of 1983, her exemplary performance as a Mission Specialist challenged perceptions of women as the "weaker sex."

A physicist with a Ph.D., Ride joined the astronaut corps in 1978 as a part of the first class of astronauts recruited specifically for the Space Shuttle Program. Her second and last space mission was STS-41G in 1984. Viewed as a leader in the NASA community, she served on the Rogers Commission after the Challenger disaster in 1986 as well as the Columbia Accident Investigation Board (CAIB) in 2003. She also led the task force that produced a visionary strategic planning report in 1987 titled, “NASA Leadership and America’s Future in Space,” but known popularly as the Ride Report.

After she retired from NASA in 1987, Dr. Ride taught first at Stanford and later at the University of California, San Diego. Until her death in 2012, she was president and CEO of Sally Ride Science, a company that promoted science education.

Dr. Ride’s partner, Dr. Tam O’Shaughnessy, donated the button to the Museum in 2013.