The movement for the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA) to the constitution of the United States promoted a policy change central to the liberal branch of “second wave” feminism in the United States. That movement illustrates several dynamics, including those of abeyance structures, communicative distrust, the politics of contingency, the role of moral incentives in collective action problems, “deafness” in social movements, decision by accretion, participatory decentralization, and movement/countermovement interaction.