Phyllis Schlafly (born 1924) was an American conservative political activist and author, noted for her vocal and well-organized opposition to the Equal Rights Amendment.

Phyllis Stewart was born August 15, 1924, in St. Louis, Missouri. She received a mainly Catholic education but transferred from a Catholic college to Washington University in St. Louis in 1942. While there she had a World War II defense job in an arms plant test-firing ammunition. After her graduation in 1944 she went on to Radcliffe, where she received an M.A. in government in 1945. She worked for a year in Washington, D.C., for the American Enterprise Association (now Institute). In 1946 she returned to St. Louis, where she became a research director for two banks and worked in a campaign to return a conservative congressman to office. In 1949 she married Fred Schlafly, a wealthy lawyer from Alton, Illinois, a devout Catholic, and an ultraconservative anti-Communist. The Schlaflys...