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 governors 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 Virginias 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 womens rights in the U.S. are a cobbled together mishmash of various laws retrofitted to offer limited rights.

Thanks to the legal work Ruth Bader Ginsburg did before joining the Supreme Court, the high court has looked to the 14th Amendment to protect women from discrimination. But even under that measure, which was passed after the Civil War and meant to protect the rights of formerly enslaved Americans, discrimination against women does not receive the same level of scrutiny as it does when levied against African Americans or other protected groups.

Thats made it difficult for women to get equal pay for equal work; equal access to health care; and protection against domestic violence, harassment in the workplace, and sexual assault.

The ERA was first proposed in 1923, passed by Congress in 1972 and then sent out to the states for ratification. Only 35 states ratified it before the Congress-set deadline of 1982.