Document 22: "Epilogue: The Spirit of Houston," 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. 172-73.

Introduction

   Organizers of the NWC prided themselves on their innovative and flexible management of conference facilities that necessitated extensive volunteer assistance unlike similar and better-funded men's events. Organizers carefully selected female businesses to supply necessary goods and services. The following document suggests that the goal of the NWC to be an inclusive, "nonracist, nonsexist, and multicultural" event was largely achieved. Measures were put in place to ensure disabled participants equal physical access to conference venues and the use of sign language permitted deaf participants to follow the proceedings.

p. 172

EPILOGUE:

The Spirit of Houston

   Women who came to Houston in 1977 will remember the Conference not only for the decisions they made but also for the spirit in which they worked together to make them.

   Superficially, the sights and sounds of Houston reminded veteran reporters of the national political conventions. No sleep but lots of excitement and noise. A great hall with State banners locating the delegates, the aisles clogged with strategists and press, the songs and buttons and ribbons and demonstrations and signs.

   Even superficially, however, the difference was that the signs spoke to issues the male political establishment does not take seriously or tries to forget: Wages for Housework; Keep Your Laws off My Body; Stop Rape; Make the Air Force Hold a Bake Sale to Buy a Bomber; Viva La Mujer; ERA Now; Equality Begins at Home.

   More historically minded reporters likened it to a constitutional convention for women. Unlike political conventions, it was concerned with basic principles. There were no future jobs or rewards with which to make deals, so most women voted their convictions. The delegates did not vote by State at the order of some hierarchical boss but as individuals in coalitions born of convictions that changed in strength and membership with the issues at hand. And unlike the party platforms that are decided before they ever reach the floor, most resolutions adopted at Houston had been debated, amended, rewritten, or initiated in their entirety at State and Territorial meetings opened to all residents from 16 years of age up.

   But the biggest difference was that the delegate body had been far more representative by race, ethnicity, age, income, and social class than any political convention in history. It truly reflected the multicultural diversity that enriches America.

   There were probably many more mind-changing encounters in Houston than in the State meetings. In some States anti-change women only participated when it came time to vote, sometimes even being called in by the hand signals or walkie-talkies of male group leaders. At Houston, however, the delegates sat together for three days on the plenary floor, long enough to shatter stereotypes that had separated many from each other.

   Unusual, too, were the logistics which were intended as a showcase. The program for children, for instance. In the future fathers may take as much responsibility for children as mothers, but the truth of most mothers' lives is that they still have the primary role in the care of their children. The Commission decided to pay for child care at Houston as a reminder that all public meetings should provide it as a matter of course for conference-goers of both sexes, and it decided it should be nonracist, nonsexist, and multicultural.

   The system worked smoothly. A special shuttle bus ferried children from the hotels and the convention center to a child-care center where a health examination, breakfast, lunch, snacks, naps, and age-graded activities were provided for more than 150 children of delegates and volunteer staff on all four days of the Conference.

   The professional child-care staff had been trained in nonsexist child development. Multicultural field trips to points of interest in Houston were planned. And in order to clue the children in on what their parents were doing at the Coliseum, there were discussions of the role of women in history and the program of the Conference.

   And then there were the disabled. Most conventionally-run conferences relegate the handicapped to the sidelines, if it is possible for them to participate at all. At Houston, ramps were built giving access to the Conference floor so that the motorized "chairees" were able to propel themselves into the thick of demonstrations and were given precedence in the scramble for position at the mikes by a special request of the chair. At one point, a woman with a cane guided herself off the convention floor by grasping the back of a sighted woman's wheelchair. The disabled added their voices to the chants and their ideas to the proceedings. Arrangements for accommodating them were based on the suggestions they made to the conference staff in advance.

   The IWY Commission had determined early to make these arrangements a visible model. Two "signers," one on each side of the stage, translated the deliberations into sign language for the deaf and hard-of-hearing in the audience. Essential information was available on cassettes and in braille. The Houston Lighthouse for the Blind transcribed the proposed National Plan of Action into braille and sent it to blind delegates before the Conference so that they could study the agenda and follow it from the floor in a "blue book" of their own. They also provided braille transcriptions of signs for floor numbers that were posted in the elevators of the delegate hotels.

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   The physical arrangements at the Coliseum were made to comply with the 1977 regulations of the Architectural and Transportation Barriers Compliance Board. Ramps and other facilities had to be added to previously unequipped buildings and restrooms; elevators and Coliseum seating were inspected to be sure that they could handle wheelchairs. Wheelchairs and crutches were rented in advance as requested, and lift vans were provided to transport wheelchairs between the Coliseum and the hotels. Hotel rooms were checked to be sure that there were grab bars in the bathroom. There was one oversight; the Coliseum platform had been built without a ramp, and a delegate in a wheelchair had to be carried up the stairs to participate in the opening day's ceremonies.

   The Conference differed from male-run events in some less visible ways. The Commission made it a point to solicit bids from women-owned or women-run services and often found that these were the most competent and most economical. Women in Production, for instance, a California-based, all-woman crew, did all the staging, lighting, and sound for the 35 hours of entertainment at the Seneca Falls South.

   Like many women's events, the Conference was underfinanced. The original request for financing 56 State and Territorial meetings plus a national conference had been $10 million. Managing on only half of that meant much pennypinching, ingenuity, and dependence on volunteers. At Houston alone, about 3,000 people donated their services. State meetings had also depended heavily on volunteers, because much money went into paying the way of women who could not otherwise afforded to participate.

   Night owl volunteers reported for duty after midnight each night to help get out the National Conference Daily Bulletin, which provided official summaries of each day's floor resolutions and Conference business. The volunteers typed, sorted pages, and stapled to have the Xeroxed Bulletin ready before sunup.

   Busy and highly paid professional women volunteered their special services too. Dr. Constance Myers of the University of South Carolina recruited 27 oral historians from leading universities to tape interviews with a random cross section of women attending the Conference. Their tapes will be deposited in the National Archives for future historians to use in analyzing the Houston conference.

   About a hundred media women came to the Conference and pitched in to make the Houston Breakthrough a daily for the duration. The regular Breakthrough, a monthly woman's newspaper edited by Janice Blue and Gabrielle Cosgriff, issued a call to every women's publication in the country asking for help to produce an unofficial daily similar to one produced at the Mexico City conference in 1975. The 36-page Breakthrough provided the most detailed coverage of the dozens of meetings and personalities that the regular press did not have time or staff to cover.

   But the most significant difference was an intangible one of style. Perhaps because women have been trained to adapt, they were remarkably good humored in the adversity of the hotel mixup and ingenious in organizing to cope with it. "Men wouldn't stand for this," women would exclaim when they found themselves standing for hours in line. But after the first flash of anger, they endured and made do.

   Delegates seemed open and personal in reaching out to strangers and making new friends. Some went to the Astro-Arena to find out how anti-change women really felt about the issues. A great many took advantage of the opportunities to explore the lifestyles and cultures of women quite different from themselves.

   An ultimate cross-cultural exchange was the dialogue between two muumuu-clad Samoans who had never been to the mainland before and some activist prostitutes from the Coyote organization, reported by Lindsy Van Gelder in Ms. Magazine. The Samoans were interested in a frank exchange about prostitution. "How often do you do it? What's it like? What does it pay?" they wanted to know.

   There was more compassion. "It's a hole in the road you happen to hit," a younger woman told an older one, embarrassed because she was stumbling from fatigue on the way back to the hotel after a late night session.

   There was more sharing of food, of space, of experience, and of expertise.

   Most significant for the future were the hints of what politics will be like when it will be as easy to elect a woman as a man. In spite of strong feelings, the woman in this overwhelming female convention seemed more willingly to compromise to achieve coalition, more responsive to the views of the other side, and far less likely to seek out confrontations. "We're trying hard to be nice to each other," Joanne Alter from Illinois said of the ideological split in her delegation. "We're all human beings." In her Redbook article, Gail Sheehy talked about the emergence of a female-based "politics of empathy."

   "Despite strong feelings on both sides, there was a remarkable absence of aggression," wrote Joe Klein, covering the Conference from Rolling Stone. "There was real anger, but not even the slightest intimation of violence, not a push or a shove. There was intolerance, but not all that much yelling … Try as they might, women had never been trained to be aggressive, and therefore weren't too good at it, which made for a far more civilized gathering. There was a wonderful emotional honesty, and even a spirituality that most men have yet to explore."

   

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