Document 69: "Part I: How the National Plan of Action for Women Came Into Being," in Susanna Downie, Decade of Achievement: 1977-1987: A Report on a Survey Based on the National Plan of Action for Women (Washington, D.C.: National Women's Conference Committee, 1988), pp. 5-7.
Introduction
This brief essay provides a discussion of the historical context that gave rise to the adoption of the National Plan of Action at Houston. Moving from a consideration of developments that gave rise in the 1960s to the second wave of feminism, the account then describes the statewide conferences that anticipated the Houston conference. It also discusses the events that led to women's disillusionment with the Carter administration and other developments with the National Women's Conference Center in the years since Houston. It provides an institutional context for understanding Decade of Achievement: 1977-1987.
p. 5
PART I: HOW THE NATIONAL PLAN OF ACTION FOR WOMEN CAME INTO BEING
BACKGROUND
The events of a decade arise from the myriad streams of the preceding decade. In 1977, when the National Plan of Action was drafted and voted on, section by section, at the First National Women's Conference, the women's movement had been capturing headlines here and there for some years. Historians can be expected to differ about exactly when the current wave of the women's movement started, partly because historians like to pin things down to years, or decades, or "periods". But a phenomenon as vast and deep as the women's movement will continue to defy that impulse. Nevertheless, I think it is reasonable to suggest that it was in the decade of the 60's that the current wave, which has not yet crested, took its rise.
In 1961, Esther Peterson, who was then Director of the Women's Bureau in the Department of Labor, approached the newly elected President, John F. Kennedy, and suggested that he set up a Commission on the Status of Women. This he did, and appointed Eleanor Roosevelt as its first Chair. The work of the Commission, while it might be considered "tame" by current feminist standards, nevertheless raised some important issues, particularly with respect to inequities in public institutions, and the vulnerable situation of homemakers. It also served as a model for and stimulated the formation of Commissions on the Status of Women in the states. By the end of 1963, when the federal Commission published its report, American Women, 14 states had established commissions, and the following year, 19 more states followed suit. Meanwhile, Betty Friedan's bestseller, The Feminine Mystique (1963) had penetrated the minds of its readers far more substantially than most bestsellers do. Women everywhere began thinking in a changed way. 1963 also saw Congress enact a landmark piece of legislation, the Equal Pay Act,
And so it came to pass in 1966, at a national conference of state commissioners for women, that Betty Friedan called a meeting in her hotel room to discuss the formation of a grassroots activist organization of women, who could lobby and take initiatives that state commissioners were constrained from taking. Thus the first national conference of the National Organization for Women was planned, and in 1967, NOW was born.
NOW came into a world in which there were no women's centers, no rape crisis centers, no women's studies programs, in which few had ever heard of a "displaced homemaker" or a "re-entry woman", or a "non-traditional" job or "comparable worth". Ten years later, all of these things and more had been created or identified, and we were beginning to realize that we really could change the world to make it a better place for women and children (and men too!). Between 1965 and 1975, when the UN Decade for Women began, and the first of three World Conferences of Women was held in Mexico City, 14 states passed state ERAs and the federal ERA had been passed by Congress (1972) and ratified by 30 state legislatures. Hundreds of new women's organizations and institutions had sprung into being, and organizations which had existed prior to 1960, many of which had begun out of the first wave of feminism (1848-1919) such as YWCA, AAUW, BPW, NCJW, NCNW, had begun to recover or renew their original commitment to feminism.
THE STATEWIDE CONFERENCES and HOUSTON
The UN designated 1975 as International Women's Year, and the decade 1975-85, as The International Decade for Women. Following the UN mandate, President Ford signed Public Law 94-167, calling for a National Conference of Women, with conferences in every state to be open to the public and to elect delegates and send recommendations to the national conference. Congress (at the beginning of the Carter administration) appropriated $5 million to carry out this mandate, and a National Commission on the Observance of International Women's Year was set up.
But the women at the grassroots level had not been sitting idly by waiting for the Federal Government.
There was a broad-based and many-faceted "movement" ready and willing to make "Houston" happen.
Co-ordinated by the IWY Commission,
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Over 4000 resolutions were forwarded to the Commission on the Observance of International Women's Year, directed by Dr. Kathryn Clarenbach, and chaired by then Congresswoman Bella Abzug.
The Commission sifted and sorted these resolutions, joined the many overlapping and similar ones, and organized them into a 26-point draft National Plan of Action, which was presented to the delegates at Houston, debated and amended by them, and finally ratified. The 26th point in the draft Plan called for the creation of a Women's Department in the Federal Government, but this proposal was voted down by the conference, and another proposal was substituted for it, which called for a Continuing Committee (CC), to oversee implementation of the Plan.
__________________________________________
The National Plan of Action is the closest
thing we have to a consensus document
for the American Women's Movement.
__________________________________________
"Houston" has become the shorthand way of referring to a happening that took place over four days, involving over 20,000 women and the entire city of Houston, Texas; every library and school had an exhibit on women, and there were lectures and programs and films and concerts and receptions all over the city. While the 2000 delegates in the Sam Houston Coliseum labored over the National Plan, and the 1500 media people stood in line for floor passes, or roamed the area looking for a story, and thousands of women who had come just to be there filled the galleries, other thousands attended workshops and film and video showings that went on every day concurrently with the conference, or browsed in the exhibit area, where hundreds of feminist organizations, publishers, and T-shirt and button sellers were discovering just how large the market was for their offerings.
Criticism was Unfair.
Criticism of the conference, both during and after, tried to give the impression that the conference was not representative of American women. But a dispassionate look at the facts suggests that this was the most representative gathering of women that had ever occurred in this country. Women from all parts of the country, including the trusts and territories, women from all sectors of the women's movement, women of all ages, women from all part of the political spectrum, and women of all racial and major ethnic groups - all were represented.
The youngest delegate was 16, the oldest was 80. 30% of the delegates were Black, Hispanic, Native American, or Asian-American. 23% of the delegates had incomes that placed them below the poverty level. They were able to attend because PL 94-167 provided travel money and expenses for the delegates. There were farm women and disabled women, urban, suburban and rural women, and women from the islands.
No official assessment was made of political affiliation, but most of the sections of the Plan passed the delegate assembly by at least 80% of the vote, though some of the more controversial sections, such as Reproductive Freedom, passed by only about 60 or 70%. So a reasonable estimate of the presence of women from the conservative end of the spectrum would be about 20 or 25%. Though the states were mandated to send racially representative delegations, and the presumption in most states was that since this was a women's event, the delegates should be women, the state of Mississippi sent a delegation made up of five white men and fourteen white women. But most delegations were racially balanced, and some states sent delegations that had a higher percentage of minority representatives than the racial percentage for their states. For example, Pennsylvania was 10% black in 1977, but sent a delegation that was 30% black.
And even many of the delegates who clearly came to vote against everything in sight found themselves voting with the majority on issues such as child abuse, battered women, health and education. Several delegations staged an anti-abortion demonstration when the Reproductive Freedom section came up, and they stuck together on the vote, but they broke ranks on many other issues. Many women discovered areas of consensus that they hadn't anticipated. Two very proper aristocratic ladies from Alabama discovered that the engaging young women next to them were lesbians, and found themselves voting "yes!" on the Sexual Preference plank. But a "Minority Report" was submitted to the Commission, and is included in the official report of the Conference, The Spirit of Houston (1978).
*************
It was hard for anyone not to get caught up in the spirit of that event and when we speak of the "Spirit of Houston", we mean that surprising, moving, irresistable recognition of being part of something much larger than ourselves, something that contained all of us with all our differences, and all our ideals, something that would change the world and make us new at the same time.
*************
After the 20,000 women returned home whence they had come, the National Plan and a report on the Houston
Conference were presented to President Carter by the IWY Commission in March, 1978. The Commission then
ended (by law). Before disbanding, the Commission appointed the Continuing Committee, which had over 400
members, including the presidents or representatives of the large national women's organizations.
President Carter then established the National Advisory Committee For Women, with Bella Abzug and Carmen
Votaw as cochairs.
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__________________________________________
The "Friday Night Massacre" ended any il-
lusions that The National Plan of Action
was being taken seriously by the Carter
Administration.
__________________________________________
Though Carter attempted to save appearances by creating a new but muzzled and handcuffed "Advisory Committee", advocacy for the Plan was effectively dead at the official national level.
But the Continuing Committee was still alive and well. Under the leadership of Co-chairs Sarah Harder, Anne Turpeau, and Carmen Delgado Votaw (1979-85) the CC became the catalyst for creation of many statewide networks of organizations that were already working on Plan issues and needed to coordinate activity at the state level to influence policy in the state legislatures (see Part II, report on survey of Statewide Networks). This has been especially important given the eight years of little progress at the federal level during the Reagan administration.
THE UN DECADE:
In 1980, CC members traveled to Copenhagen for the Mid-Decade Conference, where all of them participated in the NGO Forum, where one of them (Anne Turpeau) was a delegate at the UN Conference, and where Ms. Harder gave multiple workshops in which she introduced the U.S. model for advocacy networks to women from other countries. At Copenhagen, The United States became a signatory to the UN Convention on the Elimination of all forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW, or sometimes just "The Convention"). The National Plans for Women of all member nations of the UN were considered in the drafting and final formulation of CEDAW and the Forward Looking Strategies (see Part III, International Affairs).
In 1985, at the NGO Forum of the End of Decade UN Conference, in Nairobi, Kenya, Co-Chairs Votaw and Harder distributed U.S. Plan Status Updates and held workshops on action and advocacy networks to promote World Plan issues. Many NWC members participated in or organized other workshops and were active for months afterward reporting on "Nairobi" and promoting CEDAW.
NAME CHANGE: CC BECOMES NWCC
In 1981, the Continuing Committee changed its name to "The National Women's Conference Committee", with The National Women's Conference Center as its non-profit, educational/research arm. With a small membership and no major funding, NWCC has worked to monitor implementation of the National Plan, and to promote statewide and regional networks based upon the Plan. This work included organizing and fundraising for the ERA, and sponsorship and coordination of the NEW DAY - BEYOND ERA rallies, over 200 of which were held around the country on June 30, 1982, the day the extension for the ERA expired. The NEW DAY - BEYOND ERA Rallies were the brainchild of National Women's Conference Center President Gene Boyer, to whom it is impossible to give proper credit here. Suffice it to say, she is a foremother who isn't dead yet. NWCC has also worked for the re-introduction of the ERA, and in 1986 published the ERA Facts and Action Guide, by Allie Hixson and Riane Eisler (see also Part III, ERA).
NWCC is an all-volunteer organization, without paid staff, and is governed by a Board which is made up of the officers, at-large members, representatives of recognized Statewide Networks, and the Chairs of the issue Caucuses (approximately one for each issue area of the Plan). As of November, 1987, 12 Statewide Networks have been recognized. Bylaws allow only one network per state to be recognized. Criteria and procedures for official recognition for statewide networks are available from the officers (see also Part II, report on survey of Statewide Networks).
In 1986, NWCC released The National Plan Update: 1977 Goals, 1986 Status, which marked another stage in the process of assessing how far we have come since 1977, and what has happened to the long list of ideals that are embodied in the National Plan. This survey report continues that process and incorporates much of the information that is contained in the 1986 Update.
— by Susanna Downie, with substantial help
from Sarah Harder, Catherine East,
Kay Clarenbach, and Mim Kelber.
RESOURCES:
"…To Form a More Perfect Union…", National IWY Commission, Washington DC, 1976.
The Spirit of Houston, National IWY Commission, Washington DC 1979.
American Women: 1963/1983/2003, by Catherine East, The National Federation of Business & Professional Women's Clubs, 1983.
The National Plan Update: 1977 Goals, 1986 Status, ed. Mary Albert O'Neill, The National Women's Conference Committee, 1986.
Current Co-chairs of NWCCommittee are:
Dr. Allie Hixson, Route 5, Box 502, Greensburg KY 42743. (502) 932-7216.
De Burton, 4501 Arlington Blvd. #728, Arlington VA 22203. (703)522-3638.
Current President of NWCCenter:
Gene Boyer, P.O. Box 455, Beaver Dam WI 53916. (414) 887-1078.
Copies of The National Plan Update, the full text of the National Plan (on a poster), and the ERA Facts and Action Guide are available from Ms. Hixson.
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