The major outcome of the NWC in Houston was the National Plan of Action. Throughout the duration of the
conference delegates debated, altered, and then eventually voted to accept twenty-six proposed planks.
Some planks passed easily while others -- especially the sexual preference and reproduction planks --
received much more contentious debate. The foundation for the National Plan of Action was laid by the
NCOIWY in the core agenda of 16 resolutions it presented to the state and territory meetings for
discussion from February to July of 1977. This core agenda was produced by NCOIWY research teams between
1975 and 1977.[68] At the state and territory meetings other
issues received widespread support for inclusion in the National Plan at Houston. The sexual preference
plank was added to the National Plan at the request of 30 state meetings. For a synopsis of the debate and
voting on each plank see Document 19.
p. 17
PLANK 1
ARTS AND HUMANITIES
The President should take steps to require that women:
Are assured equal opportunities for appointment to managerial and upper level posts in Federally
funded cultural institutions, such as libraries, museums, universities, and public radio and TV;
Are more equitably represented on grant-awarding boards, commissions, and panels;
Benefit more fairly from Government grants, whether as individual grant applicants or as members of
cultural institutions receiving Federal or State funding.
Judging agencies and review boards should use blind judging for musicians, including singers, in
appraising them for employment, awards, and fellowships as well as for all articles and papers being
considered for publication or delivery and for all exhibits and grant applications, wherever possible.
Background:
"One becomes a genius, and the feminine situation has, up to the present,
rendered the becoming practically impossible."
For more than two centuries, American women have built a climate for the arts in this country. They are
the major appreciators and consumers of all the arts and humanities. They lead the way in going to plays,
concerts, and dance recitals, reading serious literature, attending lectures, visiting art shows and
museums, and seeing to it that talented youngsters take lessons in music and art. Without their volunteer
services, thousands of art museums would close. According to Museums. U.S.A., a study made by Louis
Harris, 57 percent of all museum staff workers are volunteers, virtually all of them women.
Women are more than passive appreciators. The Women's Caucus for Art reports that 75 percent of all art
students are women; they also outnumber men in schools of acting and in creative writing courses.
Yet in spite of their deep involvement in the arts, women are conspicuously absent from the ranks of
artists who have won recognition and acclaim.
Women created only 10 percent of the masterpieces shown in the New York Metropolitan Museum of Art; nine
percent of those in the New York Museum of Modern Art; and only six percent of those in the Corcoran
Gallery in Washington, reported Time magazine. Women composers of classical fame are rare, and
women conductors are even rarer. And though women do better in literature, they account for only 21
percent of the listings in the 1977 Directory of Poets and Writers.
For centuries, answers to the questions of why there have not been more great women artists and composers
have implied that women are genetically incapable of creativity in the arts. This view defeats a woman
before she begins. But feminists are challenging this argument, and in the new climate of encouragement of
women's rights, many talented women are coming to the fore in the arts and humanities.
"One is not born a genius," wrote Simone de Beauvoir, author of The Second Sex. "One becomes a
genius, and the feminine situation has, up to the present, rendered the becoming practically
impossible."
The fault, says Dr. Linda Nochlin, professor of art history at Vassar College, lies not "in our stars, our
hormones, our menstrual cycles, or our empty internal spaces, but in our institutions and our
education—education understood to include everything that happens to us from the moment we enter,
head first, into this world of meaningful symbols, signs and signals."
Centuries of repression The discrimination is rooted in history. Most women
artists before the 19th century were either daughters or wives of artists and were trained by their male
relatives. Unlike the men, however, they were not allowed formal academic training or the study of
anatomy; therefore, they usually had to limit themselves to the arts of portraiture and still life. Some
worked anonymously.
Even under these unfavorable conditions, some women artists succeeded. The works of Italian artist
Artemisia Gentileschi, the best known women painter of the 17th century; Rosa Bonheur, Kathe Kollwitz,
Marie Laurencin, Mary Cassatt. and contemporary American artists Georgia O'Keefe. Lee Krasner. Loren
Maclver, and Alice Neel are among the 83 women artists from 12 countries whose works are being shown in an
unprecedented historical exhibit, "Women Artists: 1550-1950," which is acquainting the public with the
achievements of famous and not-so-famous woman artists. Typically, this exhibit, seen by capacity crowds
and widely acclaimed by critics, was turned down by every major museum in the midwest and east coast when
its touring schedule was first planned.
There is ample evidence that our institutions of
support, as well as education, in the arts continue to discriminate
against women, denying them the opportunities they need to nurture
their talents. Continuing attitudes that women are second-rate
artists also inhibit women into suppressing their gifts. All too
often a woman artist will give up her own creative work for a routine
job that will support her husband or lover in the development of his
creative talent because both accept his as intrinsically superior.
Pat Mainardi, writing in the
p. 18
newsletter, Womanart, recalls that during the 1960's, a fellow art student suggested that the tuition fees of women should be used to provide scholarships for deserving men.
In the colleges Discrimination against women on college faculties is
devastating for women artists because teaching is the most reliable and often the only way for a composer,
a poet, a playwright, or an artist to earn a living. But the universal pattern is that women are the
students and men are the teachers. According to a study made for the National Commission of the Observance
of International Women's Year, women hold half the graduate degrees in art history but only a quarter of
the faculty positions in that discipline. The disproportion is about the same in music and is much worse
in English. Women are 70 percent of the undergraduates majoring in English but only seven percent of the
English professors.
Like women workers in general, women in the arts and humanities are clustered in the lower paying, least
desirable jobs. In university departments of English, foreign language, history, art, music, and
philosophy, they are concentrated in lower ranking, untenured posts.
Librarians are generally poorly paid, and most are women. The proportion of male librarians increased,
however, during the 1960's when Federal funding created well-paid administrative posts. In the Federal
system, women hold only 13 percent of the library positions at the highest grade level, while 50 percent
of the lowest rated library workers are women.
It is the same story in Federally funded museums: although most museum workers are women, nearly 80
percent of the senior positions are held by men.
The performing arts Women have the same
problems of inadequate access and pay in the performing arts.
According to a report of the American Symphony Orchestra League,
women comprised only one-fourth of the players in orchestras with
budgets of more than $1 million during the 1974-75 season. The
percentage of women was smaller in the
p. 19
more prestigious orchestras and larger in orchestras with low
budgets. Only four percent of the managers of major symphonies were
women, though they did better in metropolitan and community
orchestras where pay has always been lower. For large orchestras and
small, the rule held true: the more money a job pays, the less likely
it is to go to a woman.
The theater is no exception. Although women do relatively better in drama because female characters are
needed, there have always been more roles for men than for women. According to a Screen Actors Guild
study, the ratio in television is 70 to 30, with male characters outnumbering the females by two to one in
children's programs.
In architecture, a profession with very few women, women have customarily been excluded from access to
training and experience. A 1975 Task Force on Women in Architecture found that it was hard for women
students to obtain the internships and apprenticeships essential to career advancement. In addition, women
were regarded as specially-fitted to design residences and kitchens, work generally less well paid and
prestigious than the design of larger structures. The Task Force found that male architects averaged 61
percent more pay than females in the profession.
Blind Judging Experiments in blind judging have demonstrated that the wide discrimination against women
in the arts has nothing to do with their ability. A study published in the February 1976 issue of
Visual Dialog showed that between 1960 and 1972, women painters and sculptors did better in shows
in which their names were concealed than in shows that disclosed their names and sex.
Women scholars are handicapped in getting promotions on college faculties because they publish, on the
average, fewer scholarly papers. Recent studies suggest that this poorer record is not due to lack of
industry or ability. After two years of blind review of papers submitted for publication by women teachers
of classical languages, the proportion of papers accepted from women tripled.
Women musicians have also benefited from blind auditions—one-third of all major orchestras now do
preliminary auditions with applicants performing behind a screen.
The Endowments Creative art everywhere depends on subsidy from private or public patrons. Key
sources of funds are the National Endowment for the Arts and the National Endowment for the Humanities,
which support symphonies, dance and theatre companies, and museums and also make grants to individual
artists and scholars. Both endowments enlist the help of eminent artists and scholars in the awarding
grants.
The National Endowment for the Arts was formerly headed by Nancy Hanks and is now chaired by Livingston L.
Biddle, Jr. Only 25 percent of its grant advisory panels in 1977 were women. During its first 10 years of
existence, however, the Arts Endowment awarded 33 percent of its grants to women, though only 31 percent
of applicants were women. In 1976, 17 percent of the grand advisory panels of the Endowment for the
Humanities were women. This agency, now headed by Joseph Duffy, has increased the proportion of women on
its grant advisory bodies, as has the Arts Endowment.
The Federal Government itself has become a large art consumer. In 1977 the Carter Administration invited
10 artists to create a print series, with the sales proceeds going to the Democratic Party and to the
artists. None of the 10 invited was a woman. Women in the Arts, an organization created to fight just this
kind of discrimination, began an investigation and was told that Georgia O'Keefe and Louise Nevelson had
been invited to participate, but neither could accept. Women in the Arts identified many other women
artists who would qualify. The ensuing dialogue led to a White House meeting. Subsequently, Presidential
Assistant Margaret "Midge" Costanza wrote to Michael Straight at the National Endowment for the Arts,
urging him to look into the situation of women artists and to "initiate remedial procedures to give women
more equitable representation" on the panels of the Endowment.
Women artists coalesce Women in the Arts also investigated the program of the
General Services Administration, which buys art for Federal buildings. Much to the surprise of even those
running the program, it was discovered that women were receiving only 10 percent of all GSA
commissions.
A nationwide effort to achieve recognition for women in art is being initiated by the newly formed
Coalition of Women's Arts Organizations, which held its first full meeting in January 1978. The Coalition
is calling for equal opportunity and equal representation for women in all arts programs and institutions,
on decision-making bodies, and in grants and awards. The Coalition is also seeking greater recognition of
the arts in school curricula and special funding for women's arts projects, all as part of the struggle to
eliminate the discriminatory practices that women artists face, practices that relate not to their talent,
training, or effort but to their sex.
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