Document 6: Caroline Bird, "State Meetings: Every Woman Her Say," in 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. 99-113.
Introduction
Caroline Bird draws upon her experience as a social commentator in the following analysis of the 56 state and territory meetings held in the lead up to the November 1977 NWC in Houston, Texas. In March 1978, the official report for the NWC, The Spirit of Houston, was submitted to President Carter. Caroline Bird was the chief writer for the report authoring several sections, including this document (see also Document 19). In 1979, Bird was again the chief author of an abridged version of The Spirit of Houston called What Women Want.
Born in 1915, Caroline Bird made significant contributions to feminist literature with her impressive collection of books including The Invisible Scar (1966), Born Female: The High Cost of Keeping Women Down (1968), Everything A Woman Needs to Know to Get Paid What She's Worth (1973), Case Against College (1975), The Crowding Syndrome: Learning to Live With Too Much and Too Many (1976), Enterprising Women (1976), What Women Want (1979), The Two-Paycheck Marriage (1979), Second Careers (1992), and Lives of Our Own (1995). An author and journalist, educated at Vassar, Bird described her approach to writing as that of a "journalist not a scholar."[57]
p. 99
STATE MEETINGS: EVERY WOMAN HER SAY
The Groundwork for Houston
by Caroline Bird
From Eskimo villages to the Florida Keys, every woman living under the American flag during the summer of 1977 had a chance to make her voice heard about what she thought should be done to remove the barriers "to the full and equal participation of women in the life of our Nation." Every woman 16 years or more—and every man, too—had a chance to vote for the delegates who would represent them at Houston.
More than 150,000 people took the opportunity Congress had provided to come to State and Territorial meetings. They came from metropolitan suburbs and inner city ghettos and midwest farms. They met on State fair grounds, college campuses, in hotels, civic centers, veterans' auditoriums, and under Hawaiian palm trees.
The law and its interpretive regulations set up simple ground rules. Meetings had to be open to the public. Parliamentary procedure had to be followed. Any duly registered female or male resident over 16 years old had the right to a vote. Women who do not ordinarily attend statewide meetings were to be recruited. Travel assistance should be provided for those who did not have the money for a trip away from home. Beyond that, each State or Territorial coordinating committee was free to plan its own program, although materials and other resources were available from the National Commission on the Observance of International Women's Year.
Each meeting was thoroughly planned and run by a local coordinating committee appointed by the National Commission. In addition to interested individuals and Congresspersons, more than a thousand national and State organizations concerned with women made nominations. The committees were chosen to be representative of the population of women they served and the special groups the law said the Conference had to attract: representatives of organizations working to advance the rights of women; members of diverse racial, ethnic, and religious groups; unions; publications; women of all incomes and women of all ages. The Commission also tried to include individuals competent in law, budgeting, public relations, conference planning, and the issues on the agenda.
More than half of the $5 million appropriated by Congress was allocated by the National Commission to the 56 State and regional committees. Based on a standard population and per capita income formula used by the U.S. Department of Health, Education and Welfare, grants ranged from $25,000 to $100,000 for the most populous States.
In order to provide common ground for the 56 meetings, the National Commission framed resolutions made on the basis of research and hearings set forth in its 1976 report, "To Form a More Perfect Union." The "core agenda" consisted of 16 resolutions on which all were asked to vote: resolutions on Arts and Humanities, Battered Women, Child Care, Credit, Education, Elective and Appointive Office, Employments. Equal Rights Amendment, Health, Homemakers, International Interdependence, Media, Offenders, Older Women, Rape, and Reproductive Freedom.
The Commission provided guidelines for workshop discussion and background material on these issues, but they were only suggestions. States were free to plan their own agendas on women's issues and programs, workshops, speeches, entertainment, and other complementary events. As a result, each meeting reflected the character and special concerns of its State or Territory.
Vermont led the way with a meeting in February. Neat, compact, with roots going back to the American Revolution, Vermont was an ideal pilot, just as its neighboring State, New Hampshire has been a good pilot for political primary campaigns.
p. 100
The coordinating committee chosen by the National Commission planned a simple, neighborly 1-day "Vermont Women's Town Meeting" in its capital city. There was no expensive banquet or entertainment, but admission, bus service to Montpelier, and child care were all provided free. That meant that any woman in the small State could pack a brown bag lunch, take her children on the bus, spend the day at the meeting on the Vermont College campus at Montpelier while her children were cared for and fed, and get back home that night without spending a penny.
Like other small States, Vermont was allotted the minimum Federal grant of $25,000. Staff workers donated their services, the college donated the use of its facilities, and after the meeting, Vermont proudly returned $6,000 to the National Commission.
The kind of snow which makes Vermont a picture postcard had fallen the day before the meeting, but it did not prevent more than 1,000 women from attending, a greater number than anyone could remember coming together for any purpose in the State before. Nearly half said they belonged to no organization, and another 45 percent said they had never attended a meeting that discussed women. They came for all sorts of reasons, but the most poignant was given by a woman in a wheelchair: "I came to see if everything was really free and whether a disabled person could really participate."
The program the committee had planned contained the elements that all the State meetings were to include: workshop discussions on topics chosen by the State's own committee; a keynote speech; and a formal plenary session at which resolutions were voted and delegates elected.
In Vermont, informal friendliness prevailed. People in boots drank the free coffee at the registration desk in Noble Hall while agonizing over which of eight morning workshops to attend and then sloshed through newly cleared campus walks to classrooms. In the morning, the most popular workshop was the one on "Women's Health Resources in Vermont." Another addressed the problems of French-speaking women in the sparsely settled "northeast kingdom" section of the State. "Alternate Lifestyles" was popular with refugees from the cities seeking the simple life. Informal cooperation reached a new high when a male reporter from the Boston Globe served as recorder for a workshop on the problems of homemakers.
Everyone crowded into the Vermont College gym to hear
Frances "Sissy" Farenthold, president of nearby Wells College in Aurora, New
York, describe the slow progress of equality for women under the law. Then
another session of workshops, and back to the gym for the plenary meeting.
After a spirited round of campaigning, most of the slate of delegates suggested
by the committee were elected, and the body adopted resolutions from the floor
on scholarships for continuing education for women, the rights of lesbians,
diminution of violence and
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In evaluating the meeting, the chair of the coordinating committee, Dr. Lenore W. McNeer, director of human services at Vermont College, said she hoped it would help women support each other and assert their interests to lawmakers. Two weeks later the Vermont legislature acted on a revision of the rape law that feminists previously had been unable to enact.
Vermont was the early bird. During the spring of 1977, State coordinating committees raced against time. The
p. 103
During the weekend of May 6, 780 Alaskan women crowded into the largest meeting room in Anchorage, a University of Alaska auditorium designed for 600. They had come in unexpected numbers in spite of an airline strike that could have stranded the isolated population of this huge State. Small children tagged around with their parents and were unceremoniously put to bed in sleeping bags in private homes. As in Vermont, it was the largest number of women ever to gather for a meeting in the State. Those attending adopted the core agenda by large majorities and elected 12 women of a variety of skin colors to represent them in Houston: four whites, three Tlingits, two Eskimos, one Athabascan, one black, and one Japanese American.
The same weekend 1,200 Georgians were formally squaring
off to debate the Equal Rights Amendment in Atlanta's elegant Sheraton-Biltmore
Hotel and were listening to Presiding Officer Bella Abzug of the National
Commission tell them why they needed it. In this unratified State, the
ideological split had begun in the carefully balanced Coordinating Committee.
Conservative women presented their views in workshops on homemaker rights,
child care, health, international interdependence, teenage pregnancy, and
sex-role stereotyping in textbooks. More than 100 women nominated on the spot
competed with the slate of 30 proposed
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Two weeks later, in Boise, Idaho, women heard Valerie Harper, the actress who plays "Rhoda" on television, urge equal rights for homemakers, a popular issue in this ranching State. They also voted for the ERA even though the Idaho legislature had rescinded its ratification of the amendment, a move of doubtful legality.
Seven of the eight States that held early June meetings adopted all the core resolutions and elected delegations to Houston which were committed to equality for women. Otherwise they differed widely in geography, style, and concerns. In Arizona, where migrant labor is an issue, women refused to eat lettuce cultivated by non-union labor. Colorado's meeting was built around the theme "Moving Mountains Together."
Indian women traveled long distances from their reservations to the New Mexico meeting and their men came to help them. In Oregon, Governor Robert Straub promised the meeting he would appoint a woman judge, and he later named Betty Roberts to the bench. In North Dakota, IWY Commissioner Koryn Horbal confessed that she became a feminist when as chair of the Minnesota Democratic Party she was asked to sew curtains for a party function. In Madison, women attending the biggest women's meeting ever held in Wisconsin heard Karen Grassle, television actress in "The Little House on the Prairie," tell why she was a feminist. They watched the University of Wisconsin women's crew race on Lake Mendota.
In these seven States, as well as in those which had held meetings earlier, women opposed to the program had attended or protested from the outside, and while they had sometimes made headlines and television news, they had not elected many delegates to Houston.
In Missouri, a State that has not ratified the Equal Rights Amendment, the antichange viewpoint prevailed. The meeting was held at Washington University in St. Louiswhere Phyllis Schlafly, a leader of the Stop ERA movement, was attending law school. She did not attend this or any other State meeting, and other women publicly opposed to the ERA refused special invitations to serve on the Missouri Coordinating Committee. However, Ann O'Donnell, president of Missouri Citizens for Life, did serve.
Though members of the Committee were not of a single mind on the controversial issues, they did cooperate in planning a meeting around the historical theme, Missouri Women, a Strong Past, a Confident Future." There were feminist speeches, a women's symphony, and a slide show of the history of women in Missouri. Chair Jean Berg saw to it that films and materials representing the anti-abortion view were available for the workshop on Reproductive Decisions.
The high point of the opening ceremonies was the appearance of six suffragists who had reproached the Democratic National Convention held in St. Louis in 1920 by staging a "Walkless, Talkless Parade" outside the convention hall. The Committee voted to give them yellow corsages in memory of the yellow banners they had waved at the male politicians 57 years earlier.
"The Missouri State meeting is an open meeting," Chair Berg announced. "There is no intent to create a uniform pattern of thinking or speaking." As expected, scores of women with conservative views were put in nomination for the 30 delegates to Houston who would be chosen on Saturday.
Fewer than 400 people had registered for Friday evening ceremonies
p. 105
Sunday morning, only 369 accredited registrants remained. They adopted some of the core agenda resolutions and passed a motion attempting to bind the elected delegates to vote for them at Houston. Knowing the attempt was useless, Chair Jean Berg pleaded with the elected delegates to be "open to other ideas and try to represent the diversity of opinion that was expressed at this conference." Privately, she cherishes the memory of a personal encounter with a Stop-ERA woman who sought her out during the confusion on Saturday to congratulate her on presiding "clearly and fairly" and to confess that she would have marched with the six suffragists if she had lived in their time.
The great majority of meetings were forums open to lively discussion and meaningful encounters between women of varying backgrounds and views. Most coordinating committees took very seriously the mandate of the law to attract women who do not ordinarily come to meetings of any kind, and they were conscientious in setting aside funds to pay the expenses of some women who would otherwise not be able to attend.
Both enterprises required ingenuity. Advance press notices were seldom compelling enough to bring out
p. 106
Extraordinary efforts were made to recruit bilingual women, many of whom come from cultures that discourage women from participating in activities outside their homes. Notice of the meeting was translated into Portuguese in Rhode Island and into French in Maine. Special campaigns recruited Spanish-speaking women both in cities and in the agricultural areas of the Southwest. In California bilingual teams went into the fields in every county to tell workers about the program.
The really hard to reach responded only to a personal appeal. In South Dakota, the outreach chair was an American Indian who visited her sisters living on reservations. In Connecticut coordinating committee teams visited homes for the elderly, mothers on Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC), PTA meetings, handicapped women, and women offenders. In rural Nebraska planners made the rounds of farm and ranch meetings. In West Virginia they visited the wives and widows of coal miners and talked with hairdressers and neighborhood business women who could spread news of the meeting by word of mouth. North Dakota mailed IWY posters to 600 beauty shops.
Many States whetted instead in a women's meeting by giving women a taste of what they could expect. The Arkansas outreach committee released a series of research papers on various aspects of the condition of women in the State that were reported in the press. The District of Columbia Committee held a two-day "hearing" at which it took public testimony on the problems of women. Oregon, North Carolina, Indiana, and Puerto Rico staged regional meetings at which women were invited to speak their minds. Utah outdid itself with 50 simultaneous mass premeetings, each co-chaired by a high school student and a local woman. New York sponsored a statewide "art on paper" competition.
p. 107
Alabama sent "Voices and Faces of Alabama Women," a pictorial account of the lives of 25 women important in the history of the State, on tour along with a gallery of women's art and a theatrical show of songs, poems, and sketches about women. Mayors in communities near the circuit proclaimed an International Women's Day, and a textile mill donated 100 IWY T-shirts to teenagers who distributed posters advertising the show. One visitor to the traveling exhibition wept when she spotted the picture of her mother, Idiana Little, leader of a 1927 march for the registration of black voters.
Conscious of the widespread belief that the "women's movement" downgraded women in the home, many States publicized studies on the legal status of homemakers. The National Commission, beginning in 1976, had sponsored these studies in every State.
Many States helped women financially by providing free or low-cost bus transportation from distant parts of the State and using college campus lodging to keep expenses down.
Although meetings all over the country grappled with the same basic problems, there were regional differences in priorities and style. In Puerto Rico, for example, where the women's movement is not as advanced as it is on the mainland, the coordinating committee early decided that one of the goals of the meeting had to be consciousness-raising.
In order to encourage women to speak up for themselves, the organizers planned five regional meetings with a minimum of formal speeches but chaired by a leader specially trained in eliciting discussion. At a workshop in Ponce, the leader asked how many of the women who came had asked permission of their husbands or fathers and almost every hand in the audience shot up.
At the Territorial meeting on the campus of Sacred Heart College in Santurce, the workshop on "Female Sexuality and Sex Education" drew the largest number of participants. There were workshops on employment, marriage, divorce, media, and other IWY topics too. More than 800 women talked about some of the unique barriers facing Puerto Rican women. On the mainland, for instance, social security benefits are available for persons over 72 who have never earned money, but this amendment to the social security law has not been extended to Puerto Rico, where a far higher proportion of women reach retirement age without any record of earning. And though the island has a version of the Equal Rights Amendment in its constitution, married women can't file separate income tax returns.
The meeting was useful, but sedate. According to one reporter, young women attending seemed timid, and 17 professional women were elected delegates without organized campaigning.
The weekend after Puerto Rico came California, the State where the
p. 108
Everything from the site and the date of the meeting to the counting of the ballots in the election of delegates was hotly and formally contested. Among others, blacks, Chicanas, and lesbians pursued conflicting concerns. Conservative women came too. They filled workshops on child care, family planning, and birth control: in one workshop half of the women present appeared to feel that the women's movement itself was the problem facing women.
The California meeting was a political arena for many polarized groups, and there were times when the coordinating committee despaired of getting anybody to agree on anything.
After nights of caucusing and many pleas for unity, the Californians elected their 96 delegates, the largest number from any State and as diverse as its population. There were among them 45 whites, 14 blacks, 21 Hispanic Americans, 10 Asian Americans. Thirteen declared themselves to be lesbians, and 30 described themselves as low income.
"We did it! Suzanne Paizis, the recorder of the California
meeting, exulted. In the final pages of her report, she pointed out that
agreement had been unrealistically expected of a body as diverse as that
meeting in California simply because women are still stereotyped as a class.
"What would happen," she inquired, "If you brought men together from all walks
of life to discuss ‘Credit Factors Influencing Your Life’? Who
would expect bank presidents and hard core unemployed to attend or interact in
those circumstances? Visualize thousands of neurosurgeons, truck drivers,
school administrators, interior decorators, custodians, management consultants,
tennis players, and salesmen
p. 109
As the meetings followed each other in rapid succession during June and July, the confrontation between women who wanted change and those who belonged to organizations opposing it sharpened. Both "sides" learned to present their case within the framework of the meetings.
Almost every one of the early meetings heard from the groups which had dominated the Missouri meeting: anti-ERA, anti-abortion organizations; some religious leaders; and right-wing Eagle Forum and Birch Society activists. Ann O'Donnell, the leader of the Missouri victory, went to some other meetings, and National Commission staffers recognized some of the male floor strategists at several meetings. But in some States only local conservatives showed up.
In Ohio a split among feminists enabled the "right to life" coalition to elect 80 percent of the delegates, but 10 of the anti-abortion delegates favored the ERA and individual "antis" deserted the coalition to support many IWY planks at Houston. In Oklahoma a church-organized group elected a conservative slate, passed a resolution calling homemaking "the most vital and rewarding career for women," and then called for an end to the meeting, defeating the core agenda in a single block vote. Nebraska elected 16 delegates opposed to abortion but passed the ERA resolution in a highly charge plenary session.
The most spectacular victory of the conservatives was in Utah, the largest of all the meetings leading up to Houston. In this sparsely populated State, with little more than a million people, 14,000 men and women jammed the Salt Palace in Salt Lake City to attend "The Voice of Womankind: Utah's First State-wide Women's Meeting." They came at the call of some leaders of the Mormon Relief Society to stand up for "correct principles," to oppose Federal funding of child care, abortion, sex education in the schools, and employment "quotas" to secure equal opportunity for women. Although they reversed the intent of all the workshops designed by the pro-IWY State coordinating committee, the delegates they elected voted their compassion and supported resolutions for the disabled, older women, and minorities when they got to Houston.
At the Mississippi meeting July 8 and 9, the Ku Klux Klan was added to the anti-change forces, which now comprised Stop ERA, Right to Life, the Birch Society, the Eagle Forum, the Conservative Caucus, and many local groups sympathetic with their point of view, as well as members of some fundamentalist and other church groups. Joining them were dozens of anti-feminist women's groups: the three "W"s ("Women Who Want to Be Women"), the FIGs ("Factually Informed Gals.") With the exception of one black woman, who later resigned, all the delegates elected from Mississippi were white.
In Kansas, "Operation Wichita" flyers listed 809
parliamentary points on how to disrupt meetings. In Illinois, Ohio,
Mississippi, Alabama, Hawaii, and Indiana, men acted as floor leaders and
instructed their charges how and when to vote, when to speak,
p. 110
In Washington, where Mormons are less than two percent of the population, the Seattle Post-Intelligencer estimated that they were nearly half of those registered to vote at the State meeting. They came to vote against ERA, but they found themselves supporting other IWY goals. When a resolution supporting minority rights carried an endorsement of ERA, many opposition women were so torn that they abstained, but a few rose slowly and tearfully to vote "yes" for the minorities, ERA and all. Black women rushed over to embrace them. After a stormy session and a recount of ballots that took days, a majority of delegates favoring ERA was elected.
Although the "War Between Women" dominated headlines, the meetings accomplished their purpose of giving women, as individuals and in groups, a forum for the discussion of the issues that interested them and a showcase for their talents.
Many State meetings had exhibits featuring women artists and photographers. Women's history was a favorite theme. Crafts and other women's products were displayed. Idaho had a Women's Hall of Fame. South Carolina promoted its women of accomplishment by giving them badges titled, "I Broke a Barrier. Talk With Me." Entertainment ranged from cheerfully amateur to highly professional. The weekend meeting in New York's State capital, Albany, opened with a privately funded, professionally mounted three-hour show, "Celebrating Women," produced by Madeline Gilford, and featuring actresses Helen Hayes, Diane Keaton, Celeste Holm, Ruby Dee, Kim Hunter, Kitty Carlisle Hart, Hattie Winston, an Hispanic dance troupe, and a black rock group. New Mexico featured multicultural entertainment: an Indian women's "Cultural Pageant," a black women's "200 Year Sojourn," and an Hispanic "Ballet Folklorica."
Workshops on ERA, homemaker rights, education, employment, and heath were generally the most popular.
p. 111
Everywhere, women came bursting to talk about issues that were not on the agenda. An additional 4,500 resolutions emerged from the 56 meetings.
Many resolutions reflected the concerns women brought to State meetings. Some were regional. In Louisiana, women wanted help for workers on sugar plantations; in New Mexico, for migrant workers; in Kansas, for family farmers. Arizona women wanted to eliminate the provision of their State constitution that restricted the highest offices of the State to "male persons." The Virgin Islands women demanded public hearings on a proposed agreement between their government and the Hess Oil Company. Guam wanted local laws amended so that the Chamorro people could continue their customary practice of catching octopuses with sea slugs.
A large number of resolutions strengthened or added to the topics addressed by core resolutions. Minnesota asked the Governor to issue yearly public reports on recruiting and hiring of women in executive and judicial positions. New Hampshire asked for social security to fund schooling for widows and divorcees. Colorado urged measures that would encourage part-time and flexible work schedules.
The long list of new topics was aimed at practices that hurt those who have been silenced or are defenseless: volunteers, disables women, rural women, lesbians, abused children, and especially the racial minorities. Hispanics said that their problems were ignored because the census didn't count all of them. Arizona questioned placing Native American children in Anglo foster homes because "running water and utilities" were provided there, and they were angered by the unnecessary sterilization of Indian women. "Sometimes all you need is a Band-Aid," one spokeswomen said, "and what you get is a hysterectomy."
Resolutions calling for better housing, improved diet and nutrition, and stronger Government control of safety, energy, and natural resources, and for an end to violence both in word and in deed attested to the continuing concern of women for the health and well-being of all people. Women demanded simple justice for women in the military, in insurance coverage for pregnancy and pregnancy-related disabilities, in Government aid for small business enterprises, and in access to rental housing.
There were declarations of sentiment that put some
meetings on record for specific moral principles. Colorado voted to support
efforts towards "relationships based on the true equality of parenthood."
Kansas encouraged men to take an active role in child rearing. Iowa women
p. 112
All these resolutions were forwarded to Washington and were used as a guide for the Commission in building the agenda to be considered at Houston.
After the meetings were over, an analysis showed that the great majority had supported all or some of the resolutions proposed by the National Commission and had endorsed the goals of the Federal legislation to promote the equality of women. Eleven State meetings—Alabama, Hawaii, Indiana, Kansas, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, Ohio, Oklahoma, and Utah—had elected delegations that were predominately against these goals, with several other State delegations split.
The organized nature of the opposition in some State meetings alarmed not only avowed feminists but also the great middle majority of American women who favor improvements in the status of women. Many began to rally to rebut the false or exaggerated charges anti-change groups had been making to the press and even in Congress.
In August, the American Association of University Women invited 40 organizations to form a loose Women's Conference Network for the purpose of supporting the IWY program and the goals of the legislation. It was the first time such a broad coalition had undertaken a cooperative venture.
The Network included groups with contrasting outlooks and national organizations with broad constituencies: the National Council of Catholic Women and the National Abortion Rights Action League; the Women's Divisions of both the Democratic and Republican National Committees; the League of Women Voters, the Federation of Business and Professional Women's Clubs and the Girl Scouts of America; the National Organization for Women and the National Gay Task Force; Church Women United, the United Methodist Board and major Jewish women's organizations; the National Women's Political Caucus, the AFL-CIO, Common Cause, and many other groups.
p. 113
At well-researched press conferences in major cities, Conference Network-sponsored "Truth Squads" presented data supporting the National IWY Commission program and the recommendations of the State meetings and evidence on the tactics used to oppose them. Jean Stapleton appeared on television talk shows in her private capacity as an IWY commissioner, a visible refutation of the charge that the Commission was run by "misfits of society" without family feeling. At a press conference in Washington in October, Bella Abzug described the disruptive tactics of the Ku Klux Klan who, she said, "still want to keep their women home washing their sheets." Network organizations kept Members of Congress informed and urged their supporters to go to Houston as sympathetic observers, if they were not already delegates.
By the end of October, thousands of women were planning to go to Houston. They were going with hope and with a desire for the kind of unity exemplified in a resolution overwhelmingly approved by women at the Minnesota meeting: "Recognizing that we will never all agree on every issue, we pledge to bind ourselves together in love, to continue to work on the concerns of universal importance—the need for our personal dignity, the relief of our suffering, the achievement of our aspirations—so that we can go on to that great victory: equality for all women, not only in Minnesota, but all around the world."
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