In diving into the labor rights movement and the Equal Rights Amendment, I was able to notice how the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory basically catalyzed women to fight for their rights in the workplace along with acquiring voting rights. Before this deadly fire, the labor movement was already underway and resonated with the women who were leading the wave for suffrage (the right to vote in political elections) but after this tragedy, it was clear that along with fighting for governmental rights, now the movement had to place equal importance upon the fight for representation in the workplace as well. The Equal Rights Amendment which was first proposed by Alice Paul and Crystal Eastman, fits into these ideas as it sought to guarantee equal legal rights for all American citizens regardless of sex, ending the distinction between men and women in matters of divorce, property, and employment. Paul, an American women’s rights activist, initially began with the suffrage movement but even after the 19th amendment was passed, she still knew there was an uphill battle towards complete and legal gender equality and she was right. In 2019, Nearly a century after it was first proposed, Virginia became the 38th state to vote to ratify the Equal Rights Amendment. This is a great example of the portrayal and progress of activism through this movement which wasn’t done with the passing of the original amendment as three-quarter of the states were required to approve it prior to its addition to the U.S. Constitution and even so, will still take time to fully come to fruition.  Labor rights are also issues of gender justice as the world has progressed and more knowledge has come about regarding the binary gender misconception so now it is imperative that rights are acknowledged for all genders in legal and work spaces. These historical issues are still enacted in today’s society as there are many brands that utilize this “mass production for cheap labor” motto and go to less developed areas to do so. It is disheartening to realize that there are certain laws which protect some Amercians from this type of disproportion yet America is still doing its “dirty inequality business” elsewhere along with many others. We also experience this everyday as issues in regards to gender arise in a world that continues to struggle with acceptance for all.