Document 18: "Declaration of American Women 1977," from National Commission on the Observance of International Women's Year, The Spirit of Houston: The First National Women's Conference (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1978), pp. 15-16.

Introduction

   On July 19-20, 1848, 300 women and men held the first woman's rights convention at Seneca Falls, New York under the leadership of Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Lucretia Mott. The following "Declaration of American Women 1977," read before the National Women's Conference at Houston in November 1977 was inspired by a similar declaration authored at the 1848 convention. The NCOIWY published a number of historical narratives in which the 1848 convention was described as a distant ancestor of the 1977 NWC. For Stanton's account of that first woman's rights convention, see Chapter IX of Elizabeth Cady Stanton As Revealed in Her Letters, Diary, and Reminiscences, vol. 1.

DECLARATION OF AMERICAN WOMEN 1977

Appointed by President Carter

Presiding Officer:

Bella S. Abzug, New York, New York

Commissioners:

Ruth J. Abram, New York, New York
Maya Angelou, Sonoma, California
Elizabeth Athanasakos, Fort Lauderdale, Florida
Betty Blanton, Nashville, Tennessee
Cecilia Preciado-Burciaga, Palo-Alto, California
Liz Carpenter, Austin, Texas
John Mack Carter, New York, New York
Sey Chassler, New York, New York
Ruth C. Clusen, Green Bay, Wisconsin
Audrey Rowe Colom, Washington, D.C.
Jane Culbreth, Leeds, Alabama
Harry T. Edwards, Ann Arbor, Michigan
Rita Elway, Seattle, Washington
Beverly Everett, New Sharon, Iowa
Betty Ford, Palm Springs, California
Bernice S. Frieder, Lakewood, Ohio
Martha W. Griffiths, Romeo, Michigan
Dorothy Haener, Detroit, Michigan
Rhea Mojica Hammer, Chicago, Illinois
LaDonna Harris, Albuquerque, New Mexico
Lenore Hershey, New York, New York
Koryne Horbal, Minneapolis, Minnesota
Mildred M. Jeffrey, Detroit, Michigan
Jeffalyn Johnson, Arlington, Virginia
Coretta Scott King, Atlanta, Georgia
Mary Anne Krupsak, Canajoharie, New York
Margaret Mealey, Washington, D.C.
Jean O'Leary, New York, New York
Mildred Emory Persinger, Dobbs Ferry, New York
Connie Plunkett, Carrollton, Georgia
Ersa Poston, Washington, D.C.
Claire Randall, New York, New York
Alice S. Rossi, Amherst, Massachusetts
Gloria Scott, Houston, Texas
Eleanor Smeal, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania
Jean Stapleton, Los Angeles, California
Gloria Steinem, New York, New York
Ethel Taylor, Bala-Cynwyd, Pennsylvania
Carmen Delgado Votaw, Bethesda, Maryland
Gerridee Wheeler, Bismarck, North Dakota
Addie Wyatt, Chicago, Illinois

Commissioners Appointed as Members of Congress:

Senator Birch Bayh, Indiana
Senator Charles Percy, Illinois
Representative Margaret Heckler, Wellesley, Massachusetts
Representative Elizabeth Holtzman, New York, New York

Honorary Commissioner:

Rosalynn Carter

Executive Director:

Dr. Kathryn Clarenbach

p. 15

   We are here to move history forward.

   We are women from every State and Territory in the Nation.

   We are women of different ages, beliefs, and life-styles.

   We are women of many economic, social, political, racial, ethnic, cultural, educational and religious backgrounds.

   We are married, single, widowed, and divorced.

   We are mothers and daughters.

   We are sisters.

   We speak in varied accents and languages but we share the common language and experience of American women who throughout our Nation's life have been denied the opportunities, rights, privileges and responsibilities accorded to men.

   For the first time in the more than 200 years of our democracy, we are gathered in a National Women's Conference, charged under Federal law to assess the status of women in our country, to measure the progress we have made, to identify the barriers that prevent us from participating fully and equally in all aspects of national life, and to make recommendations to the President and to the Congress for means by which such barriers can be removed.

   We recognize the positive changes that have occurred in the lives of women since the founding of our nation. In more than a century of struggle from Seneca Falls 1848 to Houston 1977, we have progressed from being non-persons and slaves whose work and achievements were unrecognized, whose needs were ignored, and whose rights were suppressed to being citizens with freedoms and aspirations of which our ancestors could only dream.

   We can vote and own property. We work in the home, in our communities and in every occupation. We are 40 percent of the labor force. We are in the arts, sciences, professions and politics. We raise children, govern States, head businesses and institutions, climb mountains, explore the ocean depths and reach toward the moon.

   Our lives no longer end with the childbearing years. Our lifespan has increased to more than 75 years. We have become a majority of the population, 51.3 percent, and by the 21st century, we shall be an even larger majority.

   But despite some gains made in the past 200 years, our dream of equality is still withheld from us and millions of women still face a daily reality of discrimination, limited opportunities and economic hardship.

   Man-made barriers, laws, social customs and prejudices continue to keep a majority of women in an inferior position without full control of our lives and bodies.

   From infancy throughout life, in personal and public relationships, in the family, in the schools, in every occupation and profession, too often we find our individuality, our capabilities, our earning powers diminished by discriminatory practices and outmoded ideas of what a woman is, what a woman can do, and what a woman must be.

   Increasingly, we are victims of crimes of violence in a culture that degrades us as sex objects and promotes pornography for profit.

   We are poorer than men. And those of us who are a minority women—blacks, Hispanic Americans, Native Americans, and Asian Americans—must overcome the double burden of discrimination based on race and sex.

   We lack effective political and economic power. We have only minor and insignificant roles in making, interpreting and enforcing our laws, in running our political parties, businesses, unions, schools, and institutions, in directing the media, in governing our country, in deciding issues of war or peace.

   We do not seek special privileges, but we demand as a human right a full voice and role for women in determining the destiny of

p. 16

our world, our nation, our families and our individual lives.

   We seek these rights for all women, whether or not they choose as individuals to use them.

   We are part of a worldwide movement of women who believe that only by bringing women into full partnership with men and respecting our rights as half the human race can we hope to achieve a world in which the whole human race—men, women, and children—can live in peace and security.

   Based on the views of women who have met in every Starte and Territory in the past year, the National Plan of Action is presented to the President and the Congress as our recommendations for implementing Public Law 94-167.

   We are entitled to and expect serious attention to our proposals.

   We demand immediate and continuing action on our National Plan by Federal, State, public, and private institutions so that by 1985, the end of the International Decade for Women proclaimed by the United Nations, everything possible under the law will have been done to provide American women with full equality.

The rest will be up to the hearts, minds, and moral consciences of men and women and what they do to make our society truly democratic and open to all.

   We pledge ourselves with all the strength of our dedication to this struggle "to form a more perfect Union."

   

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