Muriel Zaginailoff still remembers standing outside Memorial Middle School in Beverly on Election Day in 1976 holding a sign urging voters to ratify the Equal Rights Amendment.

“We were so electrified with the opportunity,” said Zaginailoff, who was president of the Beverly League of Women Voters at the time.

A lot has changed since Zaginailoff stood outside on that chilly November morning. Women now make up nearly 60 percent of college graduates and have risen to positions of national leadership in business and government.

Zaginailoff, then a homemaker and mother of two, was part of that trend. She entered the work force in 1981 and eventually rose to the level of bank loan administrator. Today, she is retired but working actively on affordable housing issues.

“I think women are more independent and raised to think for themselves,” she said. “We raised our daughters, you know.”

The ERA, however, remains an unrealized opportunity. Between 1972 and 1977, it was ratified by 35 states — three short of the number needed for it to become law — but it has since languished. The last ERA referendum was in 1983.

Now, the Democratic-controlled Congress is once again taking up the fight. On March 27, Democrats in the House and Senate introduced the ERA under a new name — the Women’s Equality Amendment — and vowed to vote on it by 2009. The key line: “Equality of rights under the law shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of sex.”

The announcement met with a mixture of enthusiasm and skepticism from the generation of North Shore feminists who were involved in the push for the Equal Rights Amendment in the 1970s.

“I would like to see it passed, but I don’t think it’s going to,” said Mary Devine of Marblehead, a retired Salem State College professor.

“I think people think feminism has won its way, which it hasn’t. We now have women governors and women senators and don’t think we need this kind of protection anymore. There’s a whole generation of women who don’t see that there’s any need for something like that.”

Fighting for equal pay

Devine was one of 22 female faculty members who sued Salem State College in 1973 for equal pay. The college eventually settled, and the women received between $6,000 and $70,000 in back pay, Devine said.

“I think that women have attained a lot of what it was that we were struggling for without the passage of the Equal Rights Amendment,” said Pat Gozemba of Salem, who was also part of the suit. “I think having the ERA would just be a recognition of what is just in our society.”

Gozemba, 66, has fought for equal rights for women both locally and nationally. Besides attending ERA rallies in Washington, she helped found the Florence Luscomb Women’s Center at Salem State in the 1970s and pioneered their women studies curriculum.

Gozemba has since turned her activism toward gay rights and environmental issues. Her latest book, “Courting Equality,” tells the history of gay marriage through photographs.

“Despite not attaining the ERA, we actually did achieve a lot of what we hoped we would achieve with the ERA,” Gozemba said. “For example, a lot of women wanted to be in the military and now, as a result of that, we see women getting killed in Iraq and Afghanistan. I guess that’s equality.”

Heidi Vega Cavanaugh, president of Cape Ann/North Shore NOW, said many young women mistakenly believe that the ERA passed. Cavanaugh, 31, was not yet born when Congress passed the Equal Rights Amendment but said she feels it’s her “duty” to complete what was started in 1923, when the first ERA was introduced.

“Most of what you’ll read or hear is ‘Why do women need this?’” said Cavanaugh, of Groveland. “The fact of the matter is it’s critical in order to ensure that these rights are maintained and in order to progress these rights for women in general.”

Zaginailoff admits that, living in Massachusetts, she is sometimes lulled into thinking the ERA has passed. She was rudely awakened recently at the national meeting of the League of Women Voters, where women from Florida and Arizona came forward to say that their legislatures had not yet adopted Equal Rights statutes.

“I think that in women’s issues, there has been a lot of progress and, sure, women of 25 years of age or so think it’s all been done,” Zaginailoff said. “A lot has been done, you can’t argue against that. But there is not the security of having the language in the Constitution, and that, to me, is the bottom line.”