Meryl Streep pens personal letter to all members of Congress

WASHINGTON, June 24 (UPI) -- Each of the 535 members of the United States Congress received a personal letter from actress Meryl Streep Tuesday morning urging them to pass the Equal Rights Amendment.

Streep sent the letter on behalf of the ERA Coalition for the ratification of the amendment first passed in 1972. The act makes equal rights for women constitutional law.

"The ERA is not just a women's rights issue," Streep wrote in her letter, confirmed by Washington Post, "it will have a meaningful benefit for the whole human family."

The letter, meant as a call to action for members of the House and Senate to resurrect the amendment, which earned 22 of the 38 votes needed for ratification in 1972. Ten years later, the amendment fell three votes short of its necessary goal to enter the Constitution. It has since fallen off of Congress' list of top-priorities.

Each of Streep's letters included a copy of ERA Coalition President Jessica Neuwirth's book Equal Means Equal, which advocates for prioritizing the amendment to prohibit discrimination against women and girls under law.

"A whole new generation of women and girls are talking about equality -- equal pay, equal protection from sexual assault, equal rights," the Into the Woods actress wrote.

In a recent interview with Michelle Obama for More magazine (,which Obama guest-edited in-full), Streep said women are "viewed as equals -- but we're still not there yet."

"For the first time, we have the expectation that we can have a broad array of choices, that we could lead in almost any part of society," she continued. "And yet we face resistance. We see that here at home in our government -- in the House and the Senate. We see that in our boardrooms. We see that in Hollywood."

"The challenge for our girls, I think, is dealing with that resistance. How can we lift and defuse it, how do we make it so our equality is not so threatening?" she added.