How Did the National Women's Conference in Houston in 1977
Shape a Feminist Agenda for the Future?
Endnotes
Introduction
1. Ruth Rosen, The World Split Open: How the Modern Women's Movement Changed America (New York: Viking, 2000), pp. 291-92.
2. Helene Silverberg, "State Building, Health Policy, and the Persistence of the American Abortion Debate," in Women and Power in American History, vol. 2, Kathryn Kish Sklar and Thomas Dublin, eds. (Upper Saddle River, N.J.: Prentice Hall, 2002). pp. 254-69.
3. 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), p. 5.
4. Winifred D. Wandersee, On the Move: American Women in the 1970s (Boston: Twayne Publishing, 1988), p. 177.
5. Wandersee, On the Move, p. 22. For biographical sketches of female members of Congress from the House of Representatives website, see the Biographical Dictionary of the United States Congress
6. See Kira Sanbonmatsu, Democrats, Republicans and the Politics of Women's Place (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan, 2002), p. 46 for a table on the number of women in Congress from each party, 1967-2001. The book has an excellent bibliography.
7. Of the cosponsors of H.R. 9924, all seven men and eleven women were Democrats and three women were Republicans. Cosponsors of H.R. 9924 included: Representatives Yvonne Brathwaite Burke (D-CA), Lindy Boggs (D-LA), Shirley Chisholm (D-NY), Cardiss Collins (D-IL), Millicent Fenwick (R-NJ), Margaret Heckler (R-MA), Elizabeth Holtzman (D-NY), Barbara Jordan (D-TX), Martha Keys (D-KS), Helen Meyner (D-NJ), Patsy Mink (D-HI), Shirley Pettis (R-CA), Patricia Schroeder (D-CO), Gladys Spellman (D-MD), John Conyers (D-MI), Michael Harrington (D-MA), Gene Maguire (D-NJ), Francis McCloskey (D-IN), Moffett, John Moss (D-CA), Leo Ryan (D-CA). See the Biographical Dictionary of the United States Congress. For the legislative history source for H.R. 9924/P.L. 94-167, see THOMAS, Legislative Information on the Internet
8. Bella Abzug, speech delivered to NWC, Houston, Texas, November 19, 1977: National Women's Conference, International Women's Year National Women's Conference November 18-21, 1977, Houston, Texas, Plenary sessions and Distinguished Women in Government lecture series, Hayward, Calif.: Tape Services Unlimited, 1978, audio tape, vol. 4, tape 1, side A. Abzug's speech at the NWC differed from the official version printed in the conference report, The Spirit of Houston: The First National Women's Conference (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1978). The paragraph quoted here does not appear in the published version (see Document 56).
9. For the legislative history for H.R. 9924/P.L. 94-167, see THOMAS, Legislative Information on the Internet.
10. Alice S. Rossi, Feminists in Politics: A Panel Analysis of the First National Women's Conference (New York: Academic Press, 1982), pp. 28, 31.
11. Rossi, Feminists in Politics, p. 25.
12. The Spirit of Houston, p. 10.
13. The core recommendations from the NCOIWY to the states included the following subjects: Arts and Humanities, Child Care, Credit, Education, Equal Rights Amendment, Female Offenders, Health, Homemakers, International Interdependence, Media, Older Women, Rape, Teenage Pregnancy, and Elective and Appointive Office. See The Spirit of Houston, p. 115.
14. The Spirit of Houston, p. 117.
15. The Spirit of Houston, p. 109.
16. The Spirit of Houston, p. 109.
17. The Spirit of Houston, p. 119.
18. Senator Birch Bayh, extended remarks, Congressional Record, 3 August 1977, 26392; The Spirit of Houston, pp. 114-15.
19. The Spirit of Houston, p. 142.
20. See, for example, Helms, 2581, 22054, 24221, 31977; Goldwater, 3082; Hatch, 32943; Ashbrook, 36149; Dornan, 38611, 32802; Hansen, 39618, 39621, 39721, all in Congressional Record, 95th Congress, vol. 123 (First Session) and vol. 124 (Second Session), Jan. 1977-Oct. 1978.
21. Wandersee, On the Move, p. 182.
22. See the comments of Catherine East and Dorris Holmes in The Spirit of Houston, p. 166.
23. Charlotte Bunche, remarks during debate on Resolution #23, Sexual Preference plank, NWC, Houston, Texas, November 20, 1977, Fourth Plenary Session; National Women's Conference, International Women's Year National Women's Conference, November 18-21, 1977, Houston, Texas, Plenary sessions and Distinguished Women in Government lecture series, Hayward, Calif.: Tape Services Unlimited, 1978, Audio Tape, vol. 4, no. 6, side A.
24. The Spirit of Houston, pp. 109-13, 152, 162-63, 165-66.
25. The Spirit of Houston, p. 119.
26. The Spirit of Houston, p. 172.
27. Wandersee, On the Move, p. 189.
28. NWC, Houston, Texas, November 20, 1977, Fourth Plenary Session; National Women's Conference, International Women's Year National Women's Conference, November 18-21, 1977, Houston, Texas, Plenary sessions and Distinguished Women in Government lecture series, Hayward, Calif.: Tape Services Unlimited, 1978, Audio tape, vol. 4, no. 3.
29. Downie, Decade of Achievement, p. 6.
30. Downie, Decade of Achievement, p. 6.
31. Downie, Decade of Achievement, p. 1.
32. Downie, Decade of Achievement, p. 1.
33. The Spirit of Houston, p. 12.
34. The Spirit of Houston, p. 12.
35. The Spirit of Houston, p. 138.
36. Downie, Decade of Achievement, pp. 5-7.
37. Downie, Decade of Achievement, p. 3.
38. Downie, Decade of Achievement, p. 7.
39. Downie, Decade of Achievement, p. 13.
40. Downie, Decade of Achievement, p. 7.
41. Rossi, Feminists in Politics, pp. 104, 139-40, 180-82.
42. Rossi, Feminists in Politics, p. 105.
43. Wandersee, On the Move, p. 176.
44. Downie, Decade of Achievement, p. 3.
45. Downie, Decade of Achievement, p. 3.
46. Gloria Steinem, "Introductory Statement," in Caroline Bird et al., What Women Want: From the Official Report to the President, the Congress and the People of the United States (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1979), pp. 10-17.
47. Rossi, Feminists in Politics, p. 105.
48. Rossi, Feminists in Politics, p. 323.
49. Steinem, "Introductory Statement," p. 17.
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Document 1
50. 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), p. 120; Bella Abzug and Mim Kelber, Gender Gap: Bella Abzug's Guide to Political Power for American Women (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1984), p. 69.
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Document 2
51. The Spirit of Houston, p. 299.
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Document 3
52. In 1977, the National Women's Conference attracted similar critique of delegate selection. During the state and territorial conventions leading up to the National Women's Conference in Houston, and at the Houston Conference, similar conflicts occurred over the selection of delegates for each State. The selection of an all-white delegation from Mississippi drew public condemnation and received official criticism from the NCOIWY. Conservative, anti-feminist, and New Right protestors also challenged the selection of delegates to the National Women's Conference. Conservatives claimed that they, not the pro-change delegates who were in the majority, best represented the views of most American women (see documents 6 and 7a).
53. On the World Plan of Action, see The Spirit of Houston, pp. 9-10. Jill Ruckelshaus, head of the NCOIWY from 1975-1976, attended the United Nations conference as a member of the American delegation. Prior to her leadership of the NCOIWY, Ruckelshaus had graduated from Indiana University, was a wife and mother of five children, and held a number of prestigious positions in government including Special Assistant to the Counselor to the President, Anne L. Armstrong, Armstrong was the first women appointed to this position, which she held from 1973 to 1974. See "…To Form a More Perfect Union…", p. 123.
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Document 4
54. Bella Abzug (1920-1998) earned her law degree at Columbia law school. Abzug was elected to the House of Representatives from 1971 to 1976 and was labeled by her peers the "third most influential member of Congress." Abzug's career included 23 years as a lawyer, leadership in the women's peace movement including Women Strike for Peace in the 1960s and as head of the Women's Environment and Development Organization (WEDO) she attended the 1995 Fourth World Congress on Women in Beijing, China. She has also been a civil rights and labor activist. See "…To Form a More Perfect Union…", p. 136; the Biographical Dictionary of the United States Congress; The Spirit of Houston, p. 243; Wilma Mankiller et al., eds, The Reader's Companion to U.S. Women's History (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1998), pp. 173, 442.
55. Patsy Mink (1927-) received her law degree from the University of Chicago law school. Alongside a lectureship at the University of Hawaii from 1952 to 1981, Mink began her political career in the 1950s when she held positions in the Hawaiian House of Representatives and Senate. From 1965-1977 and again in 1990 she was elected as a Democratic Representative to Congress. In 1965, Mink became the first non-white woman member of the House of Representatives. Her career as a Representative for Hawaii is notable for her sponsorship in 1967 of the first bill proposing extensive childcare reforms and for her cosponsorship of the successful Title IX in the 1970s which introduced the requirement of sex equality in federally-funded education. See Mankiller, Reader's Companion, p. 123; the Biographical Dictionary of the United States Congress
56. For the legislative history for H.R. 9924/P.L. 94-167, see THOMAS, Legislative Information on the Internet.
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Document 5
57. Caroline Bird, The Invisible Scar (New York: D. MacKay, 1966), p. vii.
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Document 7
58. The Spirit of Houston, pp. 99-113.
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Document 8
59. See the Mormon Church's website and Mankiller, Reader's Companion, pp. 378-80.
60. Beverly Creamer, "Orders from the Top Led to Mormon Push," Honolulu Advertiser, 11 July 1977, reprinted in National Commission on the Observance of International Women's Year, National Women's Conference Official Briefing Book: Houston, Texas, November 18 to 21, 1977 (Washington, D.C.: National Commission on the Observance of International Women's Year, 1977), p. 240.
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Document 9
61. Born into a Catholic family in St Louis, Missouri in 1924, Phyllis Schlafly's academic abilities were nurtured largely at Sacred Heart institutions. In her later years. Schlafly noted that her parents encouraged her higher education and supported her acceptance of an undergraduate scholarship to attend Maryville College, a Sacred Heart school. She finished her undergraduate work at Washington University in St Louis and proceeded to Radcliffe on a Whitney Fellowship where she received a master's degree in political science. Married to John Fred Schlafly Jr. in 1949, with whom she shared anti-communist political beliefs, the ambitious Schlafly failed in her bids for election to Congress in 1952 and again in 1972. After failing to gain the Presidency of the Federation of Republican Women in 1967, Schlafly started publishing her four-page Phyllis Schlafly Report which had 50,000 subscribers by the early 1980s and was the means of communicating anti-ERA propaganda. Schlafly founded Eagle Forum in 1975 and was not surprisingly elected president. By the early 1980s the Forum boasted 50,000 members. See Peter N. Carroll, Famous in America: The Passion to Succeed (New York: E.P. Dutton, 1985), pp. 49-52; Ruth Murray Brown, For A "Christian America": A History of the Religious Right (New York: Prometheus Books, 2002), pp. 48-49, 52-53.
62. Schlafly, quoted in Ruth Murray Brown, For A "Christian America", pp. 105-6.
63. Mankiller, Reader's Companion, pp. 32, 177.
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Document 12
64. A graduate of Harvard Law School, Patricia Schroeder (1940-) had worked as a lawyer and lecturer before entering Congress. Her time in the House was notable for her involvement with a coalition of feminist Congresswomen in the 1980s and 1990s who established a successful campaign to remove barriers to women's promotion in the military. See the Biographical Dictionary of the United States Congress; Mankiller, Reader's Companion, p. 39.
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Document 13
65. "…To Form a More Perfect Union…", p. 135; The Spirit of Houston, p. 243.
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Document 20
66. The Spirit of Houston, pp. 291-93.
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Document 23
67. The Spirit of Houston, p. 152.
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Document 28
68. See for example the NCOIWY report, "…To Form a More Perfect Union…."
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Document 50B
69. Founded in 1966, the National Organization for Women (NOW) has fought for women's equality across the board—improved access and power of women in politics, pro-abortion, end to violence against women, and pro-ERA are among some of the many issues NOW campaigns have targeted for reform. Founders included Betty Friedan, NOW's first President. Membership increased from 300 in 1966 to 15,000 in 1973 and 500,000 in 2003. See Mankiller, Reader's Companion, pp. 208, 396-97; National Organization for Women.
Eleanor Smeal from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania headed NOW during its campaign for the ERA in 1977-1982 and again in 1985-1987. Educated at Duke University and the University of Florida where she received a Masters in political science, she has been a leader in many women's rights campaigns including the 1986 march in Washington over abortion rights. In more recent years Smeal has held the position of president of the Feminist Majority and founded a campaign to stop what she called "gender apartheid," the Taliban's restrictions on women in Afghanistan.
70. Mankiller, Reader's Companion, pp. 9, 229, 331, 599.
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Document 54
71. As a Congresswoman, in 1975 Bella Abzug authored Public Law 94-167 which gave government support to the NWC (see Document 4).
Rosalynn Carter (1927-) attended college at Georgia Southwestern College at Americus, married Jimmy Carter in 1946 and as his partner in the White House from 1977 to 1981 she took an active interest in the nation's affairs. In particular, she worked in the field of Mental Health in which she had a long history of service holding the position of honorary chair on President Carter's Mental Health Commission. She holds numerous honors, several honorary degrees and awards, and the National Organization for Women recognized her service in the ERA campaign with an Award of Merit.
Raised in Michigan, Betty Ford (1918-) majored in modern dance at Bennington College in Vermont, and in 1948 married Gerald Ford who later became the 38th president (1974-77). Betty is notable for her support of the ERA campaign, her work on many women's rights and women's health issues, particularly breast cancer which she recovered from in the 1970s, and her founding of the Betty Ford Center for Chemical Dependency in 1982.
Claudia "Lady Bird" Johnson (1912-), carried her childhood nickname, Lady Bird, into adulthood. She received a B.A. from the University of Texas in 1933, married Lyndon Johnson in 1934, and when he became President in 1963, as First Lady, she took an active part in his administration. While First Lady, Lady Bird worked on programs to aid underprivileged children, began an initiative to beautify highways and continued her work in later decades through the founding of the National Wildflower Research Center in 1982. Today she still works towards conservation of the nation's natural environment and has received several prestigious awards including the Women's National Press Club Eleanor Roosevelt Golden Candlestick Award in 1968 and the Medal of Freedom in 1977 from President Gerald Ford.
Liz Carpenter has worked as an author and lecturer, was one of the NCOIWY commissioners, and was the former press secretary for Lady Bird Johnson, former First Lady. Carpenter also co-chaired ERAmerica.
Barbara Jordon (1936-1996) received her LLB from Boston University School of Law in 1959 and her BA at Texas Southern University in 1956. Jordon worked as a lawyer before running as a Democrat for the Texas Senate where she served from 1967 to 1972 as the first black woman senator. From 1973 to 1979 she became the first black Representative for Texas. Jordon then went on to a Professorship at the University of Texas, Lyndon B. Johnson School of Public Affairs from 1979 to 1982. See the Biographical Dictionary of the United States Congress
72. Margaret M. Heckler (1931-), notable for her leadership in the ERA campaign, was a Representative in the House from 1967-1983 for Massachusetts. Heckler was a member of the NCOIWY from its founding through until the NWC. She received her LLB from Boston College Law School in 1956 and among the many prestigious positions she has held she served as ambassador to Ireland from 1985 to 1989. See "…To Form a More Perfect Union…", p. 136; Biographical Dictionary of the United States Congress
Representative Patsy Mink cosponsored Public Law 94-167 in 1975 that gave government support to the NWC (see Document 4).
73. Margaret Mead (1901-78) was an anthropologist whose innovative research into Pacific Island cultures distinguished learned gendered behavior from biological gender. Mead completed her Phd at Columbia under Franz Boaz and continued her anthropological research in American Samoa and New Guinea. From the 1920s onward, she produced a number of well-known books including Coming of Age in Samoa. See Mankiller, Reader's Companion, p. 241.
The daughter of Mexican immigrants, Cecilia Preciado-Burciaga is currently Assistant V.P. for Residential Learning at the California State University at Monterey. Alongside her work as commissioner for the NCOIWY, Burciaga sat on Clinton's Presidential Commission on Latinos in Higher Education. She worked at Stanford University for many years and in 1977 was assistant provost.
A vocal supporter of Hispanic women's civil rights, Carmen Delgado Votaw has been a member of numerous political organizations including the League of Women Voters, and the National Conference of Puerto Rican Women of which in 1977 she was president. She was rewarded for her public service in 1996 with a Hispanic Heritage Award.
74. Addie Wyatt, notable unionist and the first woman to head a local union of the United Packinghouse Food and Allied Workers. A civil rights activist, Wyatt was a founding member of NOW, a leader in the ERA campaign, member of numerous labor organizations including holding the presidency of the Coalition of Labor Union Women, and sat on the President's Commission on the Status of Women in the early 1960s. In 1977 she was vice president of the Amalgamated Meat Cutters and Butchers Workmen of North America. See Mankiller, Reader's Companion, p. 314.
LaDonna Harris of Albuquerque, New Mexico, was a human rights activist. Among other activities, she founded Americans for Indian Opportunity and served as its president and was a chair of the Women's National Advisory Council on Poverty. See Spirit of Houston, p. 246.
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Document 66
75. Downie, Decade of Achievement, pp. 5-8.
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Image 10
76. The Spirit of Houston, pp. 109, 142.
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