Phyllis Schlafly is best known as a leader of the Americanfundamentalist conservative movement. A bitter opponent of the ideasespoused by modern feminism, she led the fight, which was ultimatelysuccessful, against the passage of the Equal Rights Amendment in 1982.She founded the Eagle Forum, an organization for conservative women,and is a published author and commentator.

She was born into a poor family in Missouri, but was able to entercollege earlier than most students, graduating from WashingtonUniversity in St. Louis at age 19. She later received an M.A. ingovernment from Harvard. She joined the Republican party and ran,unsuccessfully, for a Congressional seat in Illinois in 1952. Shecontinued her work in conservative political circles, however, andattracted attention there in 1964 with her book "A Choice, Not AnEcho", in which she put forth conservative presidential candidateBarry Goldwater as an alternative to what she called the "corruption andliberalism" of mainstream Republicans. In 1970 she made a second try atrunning for an Illinois Congressional seat, but was again unsuccessful.She came to national attention as the leader in the fight against theratification of the Equal Rights Amendment, and is generally givencredit for its eventual failure to become ratified by the requirednumber of states. Although she was often accused of spreading false andmisleading information about what the ERA would entail (she claimed itwould mandate unisex bathrooms, require women to be drafted into themilitary and legalize same-sex marriages--none of which were correct),her arguments apparently were effective in persuading many women tovote against it, and it was ratified by only 30 states, five short ofthe number necessary. With this victory Schlafly declared herself asworn enemy of feminism, and although she was derided by many of heropponents as divorced from reality (she once gave a speech atSwarthmore College where she stated that American women were "the mostprivileged race of creatures on the earth because they have the bestkitchens and the nicest men"), she has remained a major force in theultra-conservative movement and especially in the right wing of theRepublican party and continues to speak and write books on such issuesas judicial "activism" and to call for the reintroduction of theStrategic Defense Initiative (the much-ridiculed and dormant Reagan-era"Star Wars" space weaponization plan).