Yes, Virginia! Women Could Finally Get An Equal Rights Amendment.

Women got a step closer to equality on Tuesday when Virginia turned blue.

For the first time in a generation, Democrats now control both houses of the state legislature and the governor’s office, clearing the way for a bunch of progressive policies, including raising the minimum wage and enacting tougher gun laws.

And the path is also clear for Virginia’s Democratic lawmakers to pass the Equal Rights Amendment, which they have been eager to do. It would make Virginia the crucial 38th state to ratify the measure, clearing the three-fourths threshold needed to add it to the Constitution.

Currently, women do not have equal protection under the law. And at this point readers may be thinking: Wait, what?

Right now — perhaps surprisingly to many — women’s rights in the U.S. are a cobbled together mishmash of various laws retrofitted to offer limited rights.