Document 3: Jill Ruckelshaus, "Who Shall Speak For Our Nation's Women? An American Dialogue," 1976, originally published in Redbook, March 1976. Reprinted in National Commission on the Observance of International Women's Year, "… To Form a More Perfect Union…": Justice for American Women (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1976), pp. 365-67.
Introduction
At the United Nations International Women's Year Conference in 1975, just as at the National Women's Conference in 1977, the selection of delegates to attend the UN conference was disputed by non-delegates.[52] The UN International Women's Year Conference was held in Mexico City from June 19 to July 2, 1975 and was the first United Nations sponsored international meeting dedicated to women's issues. Conference participants formulated a World Plan of Action to benefit women and announced the United Nations Decade for Women, 1975-1985. The conference was attended by women delegates from 133 countries including the United States. As Jill Ruckelshaus notes, the issue of delegate selection was questioned by non-delegates who attended the unofficial, and a privately sponsored, parallel conference to the official UN meeting, at the Tribune in Mexico City.[53]
p. 365
Who Shall Speak For Our Nation's Women?
An American Dialogue
By Jill Ruckelshaus
Presiding Officer of the Commission on the Observance of
International Women's Year
Last June, as a member of the U.S. delegation, I attended the World Conference for International Women's Year, sponsored by the United Nations and held in Mexico City. This was the first time that women from so many different nations--133 countries in all were represented--met together to focus the attention of the world on the prejudices and lack of opportunities that face women everywhere. In spite of the differences that still divide nations, a solidarity and sense of common interest united women from every country. When the 2 weeks were over, all of us felt we had proved the existence of a real international women's movement.
But long after the days of speeches and the hours of self-serving political cant have slipped off the edge of my memory, a single event will remain--an event that took place one Saturday morning at the American Embassy and that made me very proud to be an American.
The air that morning was cool and fresh; rain the night before had scrubbed the streets. The tall trees and flowering shrubs along the Avenida de la Reforma were brilliant green in the sun. Morning is the best time in Mexico City, unless you love the city's frantic late-night restaurant and club life. In the morning, before the cars choke the streets, you can walk freely along the wide avenues, smelling the faint fragrance of morning blossoms and watching the city wake up.
The American Embassy was hosting an informal meeting between the members of the U.S. delegation to the Conference and the hundreds of other Americans who had come to Mexico City to be part to this International Women's Year event.
We hadn't been seeing much of each other. Unaware that the official U.N. Conference was restricted to national delegations alone, the Americans who had come to Mexico City assumed they would be able to participate along with us and were sorely disappointed when they learned they could not. As an alternative, they attended the seminars and discussions at the Tribune, a nonofficial, privately funded International Women's Year Conference held 5 miles away, at Mexico City's National Medical Center.
Those Americans attending the Tribune felt distant from the delegation at the official Conference; the delegation, moving to a slow minuet of diplomatic protocol, often working from 7:30 a.m. until long past the dinner hour, felt just as isolated from the women at the Tribune. Frustration and anger began to build as some Tribune women felt that they weren't being truly represented by the delegation at the official Conference. Since the U.N. Conference was supposed to concern all women, they wondered why had they been excluded? Why couldn't their voices be heard in the Conference halls? How could the delegation presume to speak their grievances and express their points of view?
John Jova, the American Ambassador to Mexico, sensed that both groups of Americans--the official delegation and the women attending the Tribune--needed an opportunity to meet and break the ice, and he volunteered the use of the American Embassy for that purpose.
Walking up the steps to the Embassy gate that
Saturday morning, past the young Marine guards with their polished,
imperturbable air, I stopped to watch the American flag ruffling in
the light breeze. Inside, the Embassy was serene and ready for
guests. In one of the large first-floor wings of the building, tables
were piled with pamphlets on and the photographs of women
p. 366
As I took the elevator to the delegation's third-floor office to read reports and cables from the previous day, I hoped that many women would make the effort to come, enjoy the hospitality of the Embassy and help the delegation understand their grievances. Half an hour later, the entire wing was packed with hundreds of women. Everyone was exchanging views on the unfairness of the official Conference. Reporters and television crews were busily covering the event. The noise of excited talking was deafening.
Then the members of the U.S. delegation squeezed throught the crowd and sat in a semicircle of chairs, facing the audience. Pat Hutar, the head of the delegation, stood up to open the meeting. From my seat in the semicircle I searched the rows of faces. I didn't know most of the women, but I felt a surge of affection for all of them. They had come so far--many at their own expense--because they cared so much about what would happen here in Mexico City.
My reverie lasted about 10 seconds before loud, rhythmic chanting began in the first few rows of the audience. Directed at the delegation, the voices were challenging the fact that a small, select group of women had been appointed to represent all the women in America. Although the shouting came from about 10 percent of the approximately 400 people in the audience that morning, the strength of their voices was enough to interrupt the program.
Pat Hutar invited the spokeswoman for the dissenters to take the floor. The speaker voiced a furious assault on the delegation and on a government that she felt demonstrated only its discriminatory practices by singling out a small group of Americans to speak for so many. When Daniel Parker, co-head of the delegation and administrator of the U.S. Agency for International Development, tried to speak, he could barely be heard above the noise, now coming from both the protesters and from women in the audience attempting to shush them. The presence of the television cameras and bouquets of microphones above our heads elevated the emotional tension. Noise and confusion reigned.
Then Pat Hutar asked the members of the official U.S. delegation to introduce themselves, one by one, to the crowd. Jewel LaFontant, former Deputy Solicitor General of the United States, was the first delegate to speak. As she began to talk forcefully and eloquently of her involvement in the civil rights movement of the 1960's, the room quieted down. Racism, she said, was still very much a problem in the United States. But, she added, as one of the official delegates to the Conference, "I am going to do my job--I hope you're with me!" She was cheered and applauded.
Taking heart, other delegation members rose one by one to identify themselves. Each told of her involvement in attempts to end social injustice in our country. Some women were the daughters of immigrants, and their early lives had been a hard struggle against poverty and prejudice. There were women who for years had worked at the lowest paying, most back-breaking jobs before finally making their way up through the system to responsible and influential positions in business and government.
Glida Bojorquez Gjurich, owner of a construction company in Los Angeles, and Carmen Maymi, Head of the Women's Bureau of the Department of Labor, spoke to their sisters in Spanish. Joan Goodin, an alternative delegate, assured the audience that trade union women were indeed represented at the conference. Now the room was completely quiet. People were listening. They were feeling some wonder at the variety of experiences, some respect for those women whose lives had been stories of the underdog who eventually won. Some of the speakers were near tears. Their words brought tears to the eyes of some of their listeners.
When the delegation had finished, women from the audience rose up and formed a line at the microphone, waiting their turn to give stirring testimony of their lives as American women. We heard from older women who had known for 50 years or more the basic issues behind the world conference. An eloquent black woman, in language that would have graced the most distinguished pulpits, appealed for unity and love among all women.
As each speakers finished and moved to the side of the room several women left the audience
p. 367
Three hours later the last woman to approach the microphone had spoken. Women stood in small clusters all over the hall; the chairs were empty; coffee cups and morning papers were strewed over the floor. An occasional voice still rose in anger, some fingers were still being pointed, but also phone numbers were being exchanged and breakfast meetings arranged. The murmur of voices filled the warm afternoon air. The talking went on and on.
Was the delegation "valid"? Did it truly represent all American women? Probably not. Did the delegation care enough to try to represent all the women of America? Yes. And we were trying to learn, listening hard, wanting to be better able to speak for all of us.
The American Embassy had opened its doors that morning not just to the official delegation, but to all the Americans in Mexico City, and its suspended customary procedure and security to do it. John Jova gave us what we all most needed: a place to shout, to argue, to talk, and finally to understand. The guests were noisy and rude by drawing room standards, but America is not one big drawing room. As in the days of town meetings, the dialogue that's necessary to build coalitions for change will often be loud and contentious.
I can still hear the noise of that morning and see the anger on young faces, but I remember most clearly the moments when the anger was spent, the harsh voices tempered--when we learned that our won harsh experiences can help us to understand another woman's pain.
The spirit that morning was a frontier spirit, restless, impatient, demanding, and assertive--women learning from each other, exchanging a sense of vitality and a feeling of hope. The end of the morning was a uniquely American experience, and one that, whenever I think of it, will always make me feel proud.
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