WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Phyllis Schlafly, who became a “founding mother” of the modern U.S. conservative movement by battling feminists in the 1970s and working tirelessly to defeat the Equal Rights Amendment, died on Monday at the age of 92, her Eagle Forum group said. 
 
 Conservative activist Phyllis Schlafly introduces U.S. Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump at the Peabody Opera House in St. Louis, Missouri, March 11, 2016. REUTERS/Aaron P. Bernstein - RTSAF6Q 
 
 Schlafly, who lived in the St. Louis suburb of Ladue, Missouri, died at her home in the presence of her family, Eagle Forum said in a statement. The cause of death was not given. 
 
 She was still a conservative force and popular speaker in her 90s, endorsing Donald Trump for the Republican presidential nomination in 2016 and praising his policy on immigration. She was a delegate to the Republicans’ convention in Cleveland. 
 
 Trump said in a statement that he spoke with Schlafly a few weeks ago by telephone “and she sounded as resilient as ever ... She was a patriot, a champion for women, and a symbol of strength.” 
 
 Schlafly once called feminists “a bunch of bitter women seeking a constitutional cure for their personal problems,” Time said, while insisting that “women find their greatest fulfillment at home with their family.” 
 
 Her political ardor did not fade with age and in 2014, as President Barack Obama pushed for pay equity for women, Schlafly sparked controversy with a column for the Christian Post saying a man’s paycheck comes first. 
 
 “The pay gap between men and women is not all bad because it helps to promote and sustain marriages,” she said. “... The best way to improve economic prospects for women is to improve job prospects for the men in their lives, even if that means increasing the so-called pay gap.” 
 
 Schlafly promoted traditional family values and once told a reporter that she always listed her occupation as “mother” when filling out applications. But she was hardly a typical stay-at-home housewife/mother. 
 
 Shortly after marrying lawyer Fred Schlafly in 1949, she became active in Republican Party politics in Alton, Illinois, and ran unsuccessfully for Congress twice. She would go on to found the Eagle Forum grass-roots conservative group, write a newspaper column and newsletter and author some 20 books. 
 
 Her crowning achievement was crusading to prevent the Equal Rights Amendment from being added to the U.S. Constitution and it made Schlafly a leader in the modern American conservative movement. 
 
 “Phyllis Schlafly courageously and single-handedly took on the issue of the Equal Rights Amendment when no one else in the country was opposing it,” said James C. Dobson, chairman and founder of Focus on the Family. “In so doing, she essentially launched the pro-family, pro-life movement.” 
 
 Biographer Donald T. Critchlow said defeating the ERA helped usher in a conservative era in American politics and boosted Ronald Reagan to the presidency. 
 
 In her decade-long fight against the ERA, Schlafly traveled across the country to speak at rallies and persuade state legislators not to approve the ERA. 
 
 Along the way she often debated feminist writer Betty Freidan, who called Schlafly “a traitor to her sex” and once told her: “I’d like to burn you at the stake.” 
 
 The intention of the ERA was to ensure women were treated the same as men under state and federal laws. Schlafly’s attack on the proposed amendment was based on the premise that the rights of women already were well protected by the U.S. Constitution. She said the ERA actually would erode women’s standing, leading to homosexual marriages, women in combat, government-funded abortions and loss of alimony. 
 
 In 1972 she started the Eagle Forum, now located in Clayton, Missouri, along with Stop ERA, bringing in legions of supporters who had been regarded as non-political housewives. In a 1978 appearance at the Illinois capitol she was accompanied by backers bearing loaves of home-made bread. 
 
 Described by Time magazine as “feminine but forceful” and with her hair always carefully styled, Schlafly said she attended 41 state hearings to testify against the Equal Rights Amendment. When the ERA’s ratification deadline expired in 1982, having been approved by only 35 of the 38 states needed, Schlafly threw a party in Washington. 
 
 Phyllis Stewart was born Aug. 15, 1924, in St. Louis and grew up in a home she described as Republican but not activist. She put herself through Washington University by firing weapons as an ammunition factory tester and later earned a master’s degree in political science from Radcliffe. In 1978 she graduated from Washington University’s law school. 
 
 The left attacked Schlafly for promoting domestic life to her supporters while spending so much time pursuing her ambitious political agenda. She responded by saying she never told women they should not work. 
 
 “I simply didn’t believe we needed a constitutional amendment to protect women’s rights,” Schlafly told the New York Times. 
 
 Schlafly first became a political presence with her 1964 self-published book “A Choice, Not an Echo,” which championed the conservative politics of Arizona Senator Barry Goldwater. 
 
 Schlafly also built a reputation as a strident anti-Communist and opponent of arms control treaties. After the ERA’s defeat, she continued to preach conservative causes such as limited government, anti-abortion laws, traditional education, strong defense and keeping out illegal immigrants. 
 
 Related Coverage Factbox: Facts about conservative activist Phyllis Schlafly 
 
 She frequently criticized immigration reform and the Obama administration and wrote more than 25 books. 
 
 Schlafly also was a critic of gay rights, which proved to be a sensitive topic in 1992 when the oldest of her six children, John, who worked for the Eagle Forum, acknowledged he was homosexual. 
 
 Schlafly’s husband Fred died in 1993. She is survived by six children, 16 grandchildren and three great-grandchildren, Eagle Forum said. ||||| Citadel cadet Spencer Mellon (left) holds the door for Colleen Holmes, executive director the Eagle Forum (center), and Phyllis Schlafly. The famous political activist delivered a lecture in a new course being offered at The Citadel called the Conservative Intellectual Tradition in America. 
 
 The recent political flap about contraception being an important issue for women is completely contrived by Democrats and the media to divert attention from abortion and other important issues, said conservative political activist Phyllis Schlafly. 
 
 “Contraception is not controversial,” she said. “The issue is not access. It’s who’s going to pay for it.” 
 
 Schlafly, who led a grass-roots fight to prevent ratification of the Equal Rights Amendment in the 1970s, spoke Wednesday at The Citadel as part of the military college’s new course, Conservative Intellectual Tradition in America. 
 
 Most women are concerned about issues such as jobs and religious liberty, Schlafly said, not issues being drummed up by feminists to foster support for President Barack Obama. 
 
 And feminists are working through the media and other channels because the American public no longer seems to strongly support their agenda, Schlafly said. “Feminists are having a hard time being elected because they essentially are unlikable,” she said. 
 
 Schlafly talked to a group of Citadel students about the culture of conservatism and the history of the religious right. She told the all-male group that “feminist is a bad word and everything they stand for is bad.” 
 
 And she warned them about having personal relationships with feminists. “Find out if your girlfriend is a feminist before you get too far into it,” she said. “Some of them are pretty. They don’t all look like Bella Abzug.” 
 
 Schlafly, who Mallory Factor called “the godmother of the conservative movement,” has been a leader in the conservative movement since the publication of her best-selling 1964 book “A Choice Not an Echo.” 
 
 Factor, the John C. West Professor of International Politics and American Government, leads the class, which brings in national conservative leaders each week, including former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld and former U.S. Attorney General Edwin Meese. 
 
 Schlafly told students that the Equal Rights Amendment had a great deal of support when it was first rolled out. But her small group largely was responsible for it not being ratified. The amendment wouldn’t have offered any benefit to women, she said. And it would have made women eligible for the draft, and would have paved the way for same-sex marriage, which she strongly opposes. 
 
 She thinks it was clear as early as 1979 that the Equal Rights Amendment was not going to be ratified. That conservative victory was followed by the election of President Ronald Reagan in 1980, she said. Those two victories brought momentum to the conservative movement, she said. 
 
 Before that, conservatives would say to themselves, “We’re going to pass out our literature and do our thing, but we’re not going to win,” she said. 
 
 Citadel senior Matt Ford, in a question-and-answer session, asked Schlafly if it’s possible that the pro-family movement could lead in the future to a more centralized government with more control over people’s personal lives. 
 
 Schlafly said that wasn’t going to happen. 
 
 Ford said he thinks such things should be considered anytime a movement is launched. “It’s important to look at what might happen in 100 years,” he said. 
 
 Schlafly said she thinks pro-family, pro-life GOP candidates have a chance of winning if they concentrate on bringing good jobs to this county and putting a stop to Obama, who she thinks is doing whatever he wants to do. “He’s ruling like a petty dictator,” she said. 
 
 And she wants students to know that they can make a difference. “It takes ordinary people to make a difference in politics,” she said, “to get back to ‘We the People’ instead of some little group.” 
 
 Reach Diane Knich at 937-5491 or on Twitter @dianeknich. ||||| Phyllis Schlafly, whose grass-roots campaigns against Communism, abortion and the Equal Rights Amendment galvanized conservatives for almost two generations and helped reshape American politics, died on Monday. She was 92. 
 
 Her death was confirmed by the Eagle Forum, the conservative organization she founded in 1975. 
 
 In her time, Mrs. Schlafly was one of the most polarizing figures in American public life, a self-described housewife who displayed a moral ferocity reminiscent of the ax-wielding prohibitionist Carry Nation. Richard Viguerie, who masterminded the use of direct mail to finance right-wing causes, called her “the first lady of the conservative movement.” 
 
 On the left, Betty Friedan, the feminist leader and author, compared her to a religious heretic, telling her in a debate that she should burn at the stake for opposing the Equal Rights Amendment. Ms. Friedan called Mrs. Schlafly an “Aunt Tom.” 
 
 Mrs. Schlafly became a forceful conservative voice in the 1950s, when she joined the right-wing crusade against international Communism. In the 1960s, with her popular self-published book “A Choice Not an Echo” (it sold more than three million copies) and a growing legion of followers, she gave critical support to the presidential ambitions of Senator Barry Goldwater, the hard-right Arizonan who went on to lead the Republican Party to electoral disaster in 1964, but who planted the seeds of a conservative revival that would flower with the rise of Ronald Reagan.
– Conservative icon Phyllis Schlafly, best known for her successful campaign to defeat the Equal Rights Amendment, has died at her home in St. Louis. She was 92. The author and activist attended scores of hearings in the 1970s to testify against the amendment, arguing that equal rights would disadvantage housewives. She threw a party when it expired in 1982, having been passed by both houses of Congress but only ratified by 35 of the necessary 38 states, reports Reuters. Schlafly—who worked at a munitions factory in World War II—earned a master's degree in political science and a law degree, unsuccessfully ran for Congress three times and founded the Eagle Forum conservative group while raising six children and presenting herself as a traditional housewife, the New York Times reports. When she spoke at gatherings nationwide, Schlafly loved to mock what she called "women's libbers" by saying: "I'd like to thank my husband, Fred, for letting me be here today." Historians say the ERA might have passed if it wasn't for Schlafly, who mobilized anti-feminist volunteers across the country and warned that the amendment could lead to gay marriage, women in combat, and unisex restrooms, the Los Angeles Times notes. She remained active in her later years and endorsed Donald Trump in March this year, saying: "We've been following the losers for so long," but "now we've got a guy who will lead us to victory." After her death, Trump issued a statement calling Schlafly "a patriot, a champion for women, and a symbol of strength." (In 2012, she warned men not to date feminists.)