Document 21: "What the Press Said," 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. 205-06.
Introduction
The importance of the National Women's Conference is reflected in the mass media attention the conference received both in the lead up to the events at Houston and at Houston itself. The anti-feminist, anti-change, conservatives attacked the NWC and the state and territory meetings in the press and in Congress (see documents 5, and 8-13). The official NWC report, The Spirit of Houston, included a summary of media attention.
p. 205
WHAT THE PRESS SAID
The Nation's media turned out in force for the Houston weekend, fueled by its own predictions of confrontation and disarray.
All three commercial television networks sent teams of reporters and crews. The Public Broadcasting Service and National Public Radio provided special programing throughout the conference and a one-hour PBS TV documentary was widely shown in the following weeks. Every major newspaper and news magazine in the country was represented. Journalists came from overseas.
Before it was over, those who had foreseen chaos witnessed substance, significance, and history.
The skeptical Washington Post, which had previously worried that "some of the most harmful stereotypes of women in politics could be confirmed," concluded that "women from all those regions, backgrounds and circumstances shared not only common concerns but an impressive amount of energy and organizing skill."
In a long and detailed December cover story, Time magazine described American women as having reached "some kind of watershed in their own history and in that of the nation."
Said Time: "What happened … was an end to the psychological isolation that had constrained their activities and ambitions. They learned that many other middle-of-the-road, American-as-Mom's apple-pie women shared with them a sense of second-class citizenship and a craving for greater social and economic equality."
Gail Sheehy, author of Passages, analyzed the chemistry of Houston for Redbook: "Once having left the mainland for that long weekend on an island of women, once having seen and heard for themselves the burdens of inheritance, the accidents of birth and double discrimination that others and very different women brought with them, something fundamentally female took over: the politics of empathy."
For other commentators, the Conference was proof that the women's movement and women's issues had moved into the political mainstream. "The real significance of Houston," said David Broder of the Washington Post," was to bury the idea that so-called "women's issues are a sideshow to the center-ring concerns of American politics."
KNOX Radio of St. Louis said the political savvy exhibited in Houston would have a global effect. In an editorial, KNOX said the meeting "proved that the women's movement is now a meaningful force in American politics, a force to be reckoned with at the local, state, national and even international levels." Columnist Ellen Goodman called Houston a "political training ground."
Even the most hard-boiled of skeptics were impressed. James J. Kilpatrick, the conservative columnist who had predicted "the liveliest brawl since John L. Sullivan licked Jake Kilrain in 75 bare-knuckled rounds," proclaimed afterward that the Conference had been "an interesting affair" that "may even have had its useful aspects. I have seen far more Federal money wasted in much worse ways," he observed.
In conservative Indiana, the South Bend Tribune concluded that "on balance, the Houston convention, which could have been a debacle, was in fact a solid gain for the cause of women." Although committed to traditional values, the Sacramento Catholic Herald applauded the Conference for addressing problems of discrimination, and declared that one of the great achievements was "that any dialogue took place at all."
The feminist press hailed the Conference as confidence building for women. "Houston transformed us all," wrote Lindsy Van Gelder in Ms. Magazine. "We learned that we could excel at serious parliamentary procedure, and still indulge in singing ‘Happy Birthday’ to speaker Margaret Mead; to knit and to nurse babies during debates; to laugh with Bella as she banged the gavel to adjourn and wished us ‘Good night, my loves.’ We were sensitized to minorities … formed and fortified dozens of networks that will live beyond Houston and help implement the Plan, from a new national coalition to help battered wives, to an organization of feminist elected officials, to a continuing caucus of American Indians and Alaskan Natives."
To many, the Conference made clear that major social issues are transformed by the inclusion of women's concerns and a feminist understanding.
"Women's issues are not simply those of greater representation in political and other walks of life," Garry Wills wrote in the Philadelphia Inquirer. "Women have special problems and insights in many areas our culture must cope with – child care, education, welfare, health problems, alcoholism, aging, family life, farms, arts, the legal professions."
Others talked about the political consequences of this compassion. "It may be called the Women's movement," Newsday's David Behrens said of the National Plan of Action, "but it is also an egalitarian movement, an umbrella for the civil rights movement and the movement for economic equality, for the environmental and consumer movements and the movement for participatory democracy…."
The London Evening Standard offered a similar assessment.
"For better or worse, mainstream feminism has evolved into the most
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Some of those who noticed the broadening of the women's movement were divided about its political chances. In her Nation report, Lucy Komisar was hopeful: "The significance of the Houston Conference is that under the neutral sponsorship of the government and through the elected delegates and delegates-at-large, it gathered the major women's organizations and made it possible for them to approve a comprehensive national political program that belongs … equally to all of them, because it was not proposed by any one of them."
Lukewarm comment tended to question whether the Conference would be taken seriously by the President and the Congress. "Direct results," said the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, "should not be expected overnight." The Kansas City Times saw "many more battles with officials who hold purse strings and make the laws before any of the goals will be achieved." The St. Paul Dispatch maintained the Conference would not change many minds. "It is unfortunate," the newspaper said, "to see so much energy and talent channeled into this event."
The Conference, as expected, drew poor reviews from those who were already openly opposed to the program. Among those urging the President to give the National Plan of Action a low priority was syndicated columnist Patrick Buchanan, who wrote in the Chicago Tribune: "If Carter is thinking of a second term, he will thank them for their work, promise to study the agenda, give the girls some milk and cookies and send them on their way. Why? Because the National Plan of Action adopted in Houston points Carter in precisely the opposite direction from where the national majority's headed."
Some detractors attacked the Conference for what they considered to be an antifamily concept. As an example, there was this comment from the Cincinnati Enquirer: "If there is any comfort to be derived from the weekend events, it is the knowledge that for every American woman fighting for abortion and homosexual rights in Houston, there were thousands in Cincinnati; New York; Lincoln, Nebraska; Santa Fe, New Mexico; and Portland, Oregon, tending to the concerns of their families, having babies, teaching Sunday School, working at their jobs and upholding the institutions – including the family itself – that give meaning and stability to American life."
Commenting on "the vigorous expression of opinion," the Houston Chronicle said only that "Houston was pleased to serve as host." The Houston Post, in a favorable editorial titled "Equality," said: "Those opponents of the National Women's Conference who try to label the whole 2,000-member delegation as ‘lesbians and abortionists’ are betraying their own inability to read and grasp facts. Starting with first lady Rosalynn Carter and former first lady Betty Ford, the conference is drawing some of the most distinguished women in America."
Time magazine concluded: "Certainly, Washington and the whole nation are watching the leaders of this increasingly vocal majority. As was echoed many times in Houston, it is a particularly exciting time to be a woman."
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