Nevada is about to do something no state has done in three-and-a-half decades: Ratify the Equal Rights Amendment.

Dusting off a decades-old debate about whether to enshrine women’s rights in the Constitution is of questionable value to the amendment’s prospects, say analysts. But that doesn’t mean it’s a meaningless gesture, and its revival certainly says a lot about the women’s rights movement in 2017.

Even if Nevada becomes the 36th state to ratify the amendment, its entry into the Constitution is a long shot. The deadline to ratify the amendment ended in 1982. And even if Congress reopened it, it’s not clear any other state is seriously interested in playing along.

Republicans, who have have traditionally been opposed to the amendment, control a majority of state governments and Congress.

But the fact that we’re even talking about the ERA decades after it was left for dead underscores the somewhat-surprising political activism of women and their allies across the country right now, said Debbie Walsh, director of the nonpartisan Center for American Women in Politics at Rutgers University. Women are getting involved politically in a way the nation hasn’t seen since the feminism movement of the ’60s and ’70s, she added.

Women’s marches crowded cities across the world the day after President Trump’s inauguration. Abortion-advocate political groups like Emily’s List fielded hundreds of requests from wannabe candidates. The Center for American Women in Politics’s own nonpartisan campaign training program has been overwhelmed by applicants – “We had to find a bigger venue for the program,”Walsh said.

Fairly or not, many women, especially on the left, feel like their rights could be under attack now that Washington is controlled by Republicans who are opposed to abortion and want to cut off funding for Planned Parenthood.