How Did the National Women's Conference in Houston in 1977
Shape an Agenda for the Future?

Introduction

Torch relay from Seneca Falls, New York to Houston, Texas.

From 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), cover.

Documents selected and interpreted by
Kathryn Kish Sklar and Thomas Dublin
State University of New York at Binghamton
with research assistance by Sandra Henderson, University of Illinois
and Corinne Weible, State University of New York at Binghamton
December 2004, updated December 2007

International and Governmental Contexts

   The historic National Women's Conference (NWC) held in Houston in November 1977 attracted 20,000 women, men, and children, including 2,000 official delegates elected at public meetings in every state and territory. Three First Ladies participated. The conference was unique since it was sponsored, funded, and authorized by Congress. Nothing similar has ever taken place, before or since.

   The NWC grew out of the International Women's Year (IWY) declared by the United Nations in 1975, and the efforts of Congresswomen Bella Abzug, Patsy Mink, and Margaret Heckler to observe IWY with a conference to discuss the needs of American women. Subsequently the UN proclaimed the years 1975-1985 "The Decade for Women" and sponsored conferences in Mexico City (1975), Copenhagen (1980), Nairobi (1985), and Beijing (1995), with a follow-up conference in New York in 2000. (See an article by Professor Judith Zinsser that analyzes those UN conferences.)[1]

   Authorized, funded and sponsored by Congress, the 1977 Houston conference discussed and endorsed a legislative agenda for federal, state, and local governments. Called the National Plan of Action for Women, that agenda identified issues of concern to women ranging from arts and humanities to welfare and poverty. (See Part IV below).

   Just as the United Nations sought to improve the status of women in developing countries as a way of modernizing those countries, so the National Women's Conference advocated many issues that would improve the lives of average American families. Although the United States was a wealthy nation by many measures, such as Gross Domestic Product, by other measures, such as affordable quality child care, the nation had fallen behind European countries. The National Women's Conference highlighted the needs of average women in a context in which American traditions of limited government often inhibited the solution of social problems. For example, the lack of universal health care in the United States limited women's access to reproductive health care, compared to that available in Europe.[2]

   The 1977 Houston conference marked a post-World War II high point for the use of positive government to solve social problems pertaining to women. It also marked the moment when proponents of limited government mobilized to oppose those gains. The ensuing struggle over the 1977 National Plan of Action was therefore a contest between liberal versus conservative visions of the use of governmental resources. In the United States more than in European countries, women's issues and women's organizations shaped both sides of the struggle about the proper functions of government.

   This project presents documents about the conference and two studies that followed up on the conference agenda, one after ten year, one after twenty years. Although the conference agenda was not implemented by the federal government, which since 1980 has allocated resources more readily to military than to domestic social purposes, the 1977 agenda has gained the support of widespread grass roots organizations. Between 1977 and 1997 these groups advanced many aspects of the agenda that women's organizations identified at Houston.

Feminist Contexts

   Mindful of the historical significance of the Houston conference, its organizers drew explicit connections with earlier women's right conventions in the United States, including the first such convention in Seneca Falls, New York in 1848. The conference opened with a torch carried by relay runners fom Seneca Falls to Houston, and Congresswoman Bella Abzug called it to order with a gavel that Susan B. Anthony used at an 1896 suffrage rally. The official report of the conference. The Spirit of Houston, included a ten-page chronology of women's history, "Rediscovering American Women" (see Document 26).

   Just as the resurgence of a popular feminist movement in the 1960s and 70s drew diverse women's organizations into a feminist mainstream, the conference attracted a diverse range of women, including reformist, liberal feminists as well as radical, grassroots feminists, rural and urban women, women of color, young and old.

   Key events in the previous decade laid the groundwork for a national feminist conference. Among them was the establishment of a President's Commission on the Status of Women by Executive Order 10980 of President John F. Kennedy in 1961. Chaired by Eleanor Roosevelt, the Commission was initiated by Esther Peterson, Director of the Women's Bureau in the Department of Labor. In 1963, Betty Friedan's influential book The Feminine Mystique was published, and after lobbying efforts by a coalition of women's and labor groups. Congress passed the Equal Pay Act. Title Seven of the Civil Rights Act took effect in 1964, barring employment discrimination on the basis of sex. The National Organization for Women (NOW) was organized by Friedan and 27 other women in 1966.[3]

   The National Women's Conference was organized at a time when the women's movement mobilized behind the ratification of the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA) to the U.S. Constitution. Although by 1982 the amendment failed to obtain the necessary state ratifications, in 1977 its passage looked likely. It had passed by wide margins in both the House and the Senate in 1972, was adopted in the platforms of both the Republican and the Democratic parties, won the endorsement of six presidents, and had broad support in public opinion. [4] In 1977 the ERA had been ratified by thirty-five states and was only three states short of adoption. The National Plan of Action endorsed by the NWC listed enactment of the ERA as its highest priority. Alone among the 26 planks in the plan, Plank 11 was approved without changes, and it stated simply "the Equal Rights Amendment should be ratified" (see Document 38).

Part I: Congress Mandates the Conference

   The growing presence of women in Congress was crucial to the creation of the National Women's Convention, since these women drafted and sponsored the legislation that enabled the NWC. The gender composition of the U.S. Congress began to shift around 1970. Before that time, there were only twelve women among the 435 members of the House, including Patsy Mink, elected in 1965, Margaret Heckler in 1967, Shirley Chisholm in 1969, and Bella Abzug in 1970.[5] The incursion of women into the male-dominated world of political office was further highlighted in 1972 by Shirley Chisholm's campaign for the Democratic nomination for president. These early Congresswomen were followed by a wave of women that entered the House of Representatives in 1973, including Lindy Boggs, Yvonne Burke, Cardiss Collins, Elizabeth Holtzman, Barbara Jordan, and Patricia Schroeder. They were joined in 1975 by Millicent Fenwick, Martha Keys, Helen Meyner, Shirley Pettis, and Gladys Spellman.[6]

   The NWC was authorized by an act of Congress, Public Law 94-167 (see Document 4). Authored by Congresswoman Bella Abzug, the act was not the first bill proposing a government sponsored National Women's Conference presented to the House of Representatives. Momentum for a nationwide conference for women grew in 1975, especially after American women attended the United Nations International Women's Year Conference in Mexico City from June 19 through July 2, 1975. Representatives Abzug and Patsy Mink (D-HI) were among eight Congressional delegates to Mexico City, and upon their return they both authored bills proposing a U.S. women's conference. Among such efforts, Abzug and 14 other Congresswoman introduced a bill in July that did not make it to the floor of the House, but in September their bill, co-sponsored by an additional seven Congressmen, made it to the floor, but failed, 233 votes to 157.[7]

   Lobbying for the measure continued throughout the fall term. The core group of Congresswomen lobbied their colleagues in the House and in the all-male Senate, with the support of Senator Birch Bayh (see Document 13). Appropriations for the NWC were eventually cut in half, from $10,000,000 to $5,000,000. In her opening remarks at the NWC in Houston in 1977, Abzug recounted the struggle in the Congress for this legislation:

A small number of Congressmen were disturbed at the idea of so many women getting together to discuss and act on our common concerns and problems. They objected to spending money on us even though the cost averaged out to about a nickel for each woman in this country. But we persisted and our bill passed overwhelmingly; it was signed by President Ford, and then the women took over.[8]

The revised bill successfully passed the House of Representatives on 10 December 1975 with a vote of 252-162, and passed the Senate the following day. On December 23, 1975, President Ford signed the bill into law at a special ceremony at the White House.[9]

   The act called for the NWC to be organized by the National Commission on the Observance of International Women's Year (NCOIWY). In January 1975, President Ford signed Executive Order 11832 establishing the NCOIWY, which was initially headed by Jill Ruckelshaus (see documents 1, 2 and 3). On March 28, 1977, President Carter issued an Executive Order appointing 42 new IWY Commission members to replace the Ford-appointed Commission. Bella Abzug was designated the Presiding Officer of the IWY National Women's Conference in Place of Ruckelshaus. In accordance with requirements for the NWC to be as representative as possible, the new Carter Commissioners were selected to add "union, racial, ethnic, and lesbian voices to the IWY Commission's deliberations and decisions."[10] The selection of delegates to represent the interests of American women was contentious throughout the process of creating and staging the NWC (see documents 3 and 9).

   The act mandated that the NWC be preceded by public conferences held in every state and territory of the U.S. Although the conference was planned as a bicentennial event, because appropriations were delayed until June 1976, it was too late to hold the conference that year.[11]

Part II: State Conferences become the Site for Right-Wing Opposition

   Formation of the 56 state and territorial committees took place during the second half of 1976. Between February and July, 1977, approximately 150,000 women (and men) participated in local meetings that elected delegates and voted on issues to be taken up at the national conference. These meetings were a triumph of American democracy in which women from diverse backgrounds energetically debated women's issues throughout the United States. For information distributed at the state conferences, see Document 5.

   Most of the state meetings were held during June and July of 1977.[12] Each local meeting considered the National Plan of Action of fourteen issues proposed by the NCOIWY. Forty-four state and territory meetings passed all of the Core resolutions (see Document 6).[13] Delegates debated and adopted many additional issues that often grew out of regional interests (see Document 7a). Among the additional topics that emerged from these grassroots meetings (with the number of states that adopted them in parentheses) were employment (43), reproductive freedom (41), battered women (35), lesbianism (35), welfare (27), minority women (23), rural women (19), insurance (19), housing (18), volunteerism (18), handicapped women (15), prostitution (11), and women in the military (10).[14] State delegations drafted a National Plan of Action with twenty-six planks.

   This greater attention at the state level to selected issues highlighted differences between local and national activists in their priorities about public policy. These differences also reflected tensions between reformers and radicals.

   The National Women's Conference and the preliminary state and territory conferences quickly became a target for right-wing advocacy groups causing conflict between pro-change and conservative groups. Some media sources labeled the state meetings, the "War Between Women" (see Document 5). The conference's high public profile was generated by its official governmental status, $5 million in federal funds, rhetorical support from the executive and judicial branches, the ERA's proximity to ratification, the wide range of controversial social issues under consideration, and the mandated participation of women at local and state levels. Phyllis Schlafly's Eagle Forum and Stop ERA, the John Birch Society, Right to Life, the Conservative Caucus, the Ku Klux Klan, and the Mormon Church were among the groups that organized opposition to the NWC in the state conferences and challenged the National Plan of Action proposed by the NCOIWY.[15]

   Phyllis Schlafly's opposition to the NWC catapulted her into national prominence. The New Right had emerged in the early 70s to oppose what Schlafly and others viewed as the liberal, urban, Eastern dominance of the Republican party. Schlafly had herself been battling the liberal base of the Republican party since the 1964 Goldwater campaign. The women's movement provided a focus for her efforts to move the Republican party to the right. She formed the Eagle Forum in 1975 to combat the ERA movement and said that membership in the Eagle Forum and Stop ERA rose in direct response to the convening of the NWC state meetings (see Document 9).

   Two views emerged of the conservative challenges to the pro-change agenda of the state meetings and the NWC. Many reports focused on the disruptive aspects of conservative women's challenges to the issues under debate, describing conservative women as pawns of male leaders (see Document 13). State meetings in Illinois, Ohio, Mississippi, Alabama, Hawaii, and Indiana included men who were said to direct the actions of women delegates.[16] Other sources, including the official NCOIWY's report, The Spirit of Houston, noted that the presence of conservative women reflected the inclusive quality of the state and NWC meetings. Not all conservative women were considered to be under the direction of male church leaders or heads of other right-wing organizations. Many conservative women were recorded to have voted according to their own consciences, and subsequently affirmed their experience of participating in the state meetings as a valuable learning experience (see documents 5 and 8).

   This was true of the most prominent conservative group to attend the state meetings, the Relief Society of the Mormon Church, headed by Barbara Smith in 1977. In Utah, 12,000 women organizers believed to be Mormon, registered as voters at the state meeting, swelling attendance to 14,000 overall. Contemporary reports noted that Church officials had provided Mormon women who attended the Utah state meeting with fliers suggesting what stance women should take when voting on issues such as the ERA and abortion (both of which the Church opposed). There was also a suggestion of an alliance at the Utah meeting between Schlafly's Eagle Forum and the Mormon Church. Yet some reports indicate that Smith and her peers supported issues they believed sound, participating in the true spirit of the meetings (see documents 5, 8 and 11) and, during the Third Plenary session at the NWC, at least one Mormon woman, Jean Westwood, spoke in favor of the ERA (see her comments in Document 19).

   Conservatives attending the state meetings targeted high-profile issues that were socially divisive, especially abortion, lesbianism, and the Equal Rights Amendment. Robert Shelton, imperial wizard of the Ku Klux Klan, employed this tactic in September of 1977 as he spoke out against the NWC. In his efforts to discredit feminists, Shelton argued that Klan men planned to attend the NWC in order to protect women affiliated with the Klan from "militant lesbians" who he suggested had inappropriately "approached" Klan women at the state meetings (see Document 10). Like Shelton, Phyllis Schlafly led a public relations campaign that sought to discredit the Houston conference as a legitimate public discourse. Schlafly predicted "Houston will finish off the women's movement. It will show them off for the radical, antifamily, prolesbian people they are" (see Document 9).[17]

   Meetings in some southern and western states were dominated by anti-feminist groups who challenged the National Plan and the election of pro-change delegates. Registered voters in Alabama. Florida, Indiana, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, Oklahoma, and Utah elected anti-Plan delegations, and voted against all of the recommendations of the National Plan.[18] Mississippi sent an all-white delegation to Houston, which brought objections from other delegates, who noted that the state's population was more than one-third African American (see Image 10).[19]

   Conservatives and pro-change supporters waged a rhetorical battle over the National Women's Conference throughout the 95th term of the Congress in the spring of 1977. Schlafly allies in Congress, especially Jesse Helms, Barry Goldwater, Orrin Hatch, Robert Dornan, George Hansen, and John Ashbrook, expressed views hostile to the NWC. They accused the NWC Committee of using federal funds to lobby for the ERA and called for investigations: they vilified Abzug in personal terms, often by inserting into the Congressional Record attacks by conservative columnists such as Robert Novak, James Kilpatrick, and Patrick Buchanan; they denounced the state meetings as havens for lesbian abortionists who peddled sex toys and beat up conservative women delegates.[20] Nine lawsuits charging misappropriation of funds were brought against the National Commission on the Observance of International Women's Year by New Right groups (some even before funds had been appropriated), but the suits were all eventually dismissed (see Document 27). In response, Representatives and Senators who supported the NWC and the pro-change platform of the NCOIWY spoke out to challenge detractors, hoping to set the record straight. In August 1977, the Women's Conference Network was formed at the initiative of the American Association of University Women. This created a coalition of women's groups that immediately acted to defend the public image of the NWC, garnering support from Congresswoman Patricia Schroeder in the House of Representatives (see Document 12). At the request of former representative Bella Abzug, Senator Birch Evan Bayh read before the Senate in September of 1977 a letter by Abzug defending the state meetings and the upcoming NWC (see Document 13).

   Right-wing opposition first expressed at the state and territorial meetings continued at the NWC in Houston where Schlafly tried to link the ERA with the two most controversial issues before the women's movement: abortion and lesbianism.[21] To the extent that it succeeded, this strategy turned the Houston Conference into a struggle among liberal feminists, radical feminists, and conservative anti-feminists. Centrist reformers urged delegates to "stick to the real issues" and avoid taking up either of these polarizing issues.[22] More radical feminists argued that as long as women could be dismissed as lesbians and could not control their own bodies, reforms were illusory. As Charlotte Bunche argued during the Sexual Preference plank debate, anti-feminists used the threat of using "lesbian" as a label on any woman to keep all women in place.[23] Working with "anti-Plan" state delegations, right-wing women and men spoke against all of the Plan resolutions at Houston, demonstrated when the resolutions passed, and held their own protest conference (and press conferences) across town, which were heavily represented in media coverage of the Convention.[24]

Part III. National Women's Conference, Houston, Texas, November 1977

   The National Women's Conference in Houston in November 1977 was attended by some 2,000 delegates, 3,000 volunteers, and nearly 20,000 observers.[25] Federal money provided travel grants for low-income delegates to the conference. More than half of the $5 million appropriated by Congress supported planning and organizing for the 56 state and territorial conferences, which drew approximately 150,000 participants. The final report of the conference, The Spirit of Houston, noted that the underfunding of the conference made it necessary to rely on thousands of volunteers, a feature which it declared often distinguished women's events from male-run events.[26] The chief activity at the conference was discussion about and voting on the twenty-six planks of the National Plan of Action for Women devised by the state conventions. However, the convention also offered an opportunity for women to meet and learn from one another (see Document 19). Black women developed their own Plan of Action (see documents 24A and 24B). And a Minority Caucus met to discuss their views of the proceedings (see Document 25).

Part IV: The National Plan of Action Adopted at National Women's Conference

   The proposed National Plan of Action consisted of twenty-six planks that were adopted by state delegations during the summer of 1977.

   The core agenda from the NWC national committee focused largely on "the economic and career interests of mainstream feminism--discrimination in business, child care, credit, education, employment, and insurance."[27] More innovative planks added by the state delegations reflected social movements of the 1960s--disability, welfare rights, minority civil rights, criminal justice, violence against women, and reproductive rights. Liberal feminists who rallied around the ERA as the ultimate goal of the women's movement often viewed these social issues as distractions. For example, during the contentious discussion of the Sexual Preference plank several women protested that lesbianism was a distraction and a diversion from the "real" issues. Commissioner Catherine East objected to the plank as divisive and alienating to mainstream women. District of Columbia delegate Charlotte Bunche countered that the issue had been placed on the table at Houston by grassroots delegates at a majority of the state conferences.[28] This plank and other issues initiated by the state delegates were ultimately adopted as planks.

   The National Plan of Action can be divided into six thematic categories: violence against women, economic discrimination, health issues, civil rights, education, and political representation. Some planks provoked minimal debate; large majorities adopted seventeen of the twenty-six, and the plank advocating women's equal access to credit was ratified unanimously. Sixty to seventy percent of the delegates approved even the most controversial and hotly-debated issues, such as the Equal Rights Amendment, Reproductive Freedom, Minority Women, and Sexual Preference planks.[29] Despite opposition from the political Right, the ERA plank was adopted without modification, with the support of 80 percent of the delegates. Most planks in the National Plan "passed the delegate assembly by at least 80% of the vote."[30]

   Planks concerned with issues of violence against women became a central part of the National Plan. Delegates devoted much attention to Battered Women (Plank 2), Child Abuse (Plank 4), and Rape (Plank 20) in planks at the conference. Statements described the scope of the problems and called for specific legislative and executive actions to alleviate the violence. Statistics in the statements revealed violence of epidemic proportions against women, often at the hands of family members. The growing consciousness of violence against women was fueled in part by the feminist view of the personal as political. The movement against domestic violence emerged immediately after Houston, with the organization of the National Coalition Against Domestic Violence (NCADV) in 1979. By 1987, women had established an estimated 1,200 programs nationwide, including hotlines, safe houses, shelters, and survivor advocacy programs.[31] The National Coalition Against Sexual Assault (NCASA) also followed Houston, founded in 1978. Rape crisis centers and support programs grew rapidly from approximately 60 in 1974 to over 900 in 1979, suggesting that attention to the issue of sexual assault at Houston represented a turning point in women's political culture and activism (see Document 67).[32]

   Economic discrimination was another large area of debate at the NWC. Planks included Business (Plank 3), Child Care (Plank 5), Credit (Plank 6), Employment (Plank 10), Homemakers (Plank 13), Insurance (Plank 14), and Women, Welfare & Poverty (Plank 25). The Plan called for economic reforms targeted at specific areas of discrimination, but it also called for long-range reforms on a large scale. Conference participants recognized that demands for a full-employment economy and equal pay for equal work "imply a fundamental reshaping of our present society that would require mass movements of men and women working together to seek to accomplish them."[33] The plan noted that paying women the full value of their work, and making jobs available as a fundamental human right for all, would entail real costs to society, but the delegates declared "We do not ask the price of justice. We should not ask the price of equality."[34]

   Social discrimination was condemned in the areas of Education (Plank 8), the Arts and Humanities (Plank 1), and the Media (Plank 16). Problems of inequality in education for women were addressed from preschool to Ph.D. programs. Sexism in governmental funding and lack of support for women artists were exposed and condemned. Media coverage was a constant theme at the conference, as delegates shaped and critiqued how the mainstream press portrayed the event (see Document 21). Conference leaders were frequently interviewed by print and broadcast journalists, and delegates were conscious of the ways that reporters were characterizing their debates.

   Most of the planks of the National Plan concerned issues of Civil Rights to some degree, including issues that had previously been considered medical topics. The broad issue of Health (Plank 12), for example, addressed discrimination against women in insurance coverage, quality of care, over-prescription of medications, unnecessary and invasive surgical procedures, forced sterilization, suppression of midwives, and abuses within mental institutions. Reproductive Freedom (Plank 21) was even more politicized by the time of the Conference, following the 1973 US Supreme Court decision in Roe v. Wade that legalized most abortions. Planks on Disabled Women (Plank 7), and Older Women (Plank 19) also focused on issues of civil rights as they related to women's physical conditions and health. Two of the most passionately-debated issues at the Conference resulted in calls for full civil rights for Minority Women (Plank 17), and Lesbians (Sexual Preference) (Plank 23). The Plan also called for civil rights for less visible groups of women historically discriminated against: Offenders (Plank 18), and Rural Women (Plank 22).

   Issues related to political rights included Elective and Appointive Office (Plank 9), the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA) (Plank 11), and International Affairs (Plank 15). The National Plan declared passage of the ERA to be the NWC's highest priority. The centrality of the issue at Houston indicates the shift in ERA support between 1920 and 1977 from marginal to mainstream. The plank on Statistics (Plank 24) argued that federal data collection discriminated against women by undercounting minority women, female heads of household, and women workers resulting in less effective social policy planning. Finally, the Plan called for a Continuing Committee of the Conference (Plank 26), which consisted of 470 voluntary members charged with carrying out the mandate of the Plan.

Part V. Houston Conference Addresses and Debates

   Each plank of the National Plan of Action was discussed during one of four Plenary Sessions where major public figures and authorities spoke on each issue. In addition, small workshops and meetings took place outside the major Plenary Sessions to fine tune the planks. Approximately 10,000 people attended the First Plenary Session on Saturday November 19 at the Coliseum in Houston. During this opening session First Lady Rosalynn Carter and Former First Ladies Betty Ford and Lady Bird Johnson addressed the conference (see documents 55, 56 and 58). As Caroline Bird observed, the "sheer physical presence" of three First Ladies "was more moving than many women expected."[35] The importance of the NWC was reflected in its ability to attract such notable speakers. Other speakers at the opening session included Bella Abzug, the presiding officer, NCOIWY commissioner Liz Carpenter, and Congresswoman Barbara Jordan.

   Subsequent Plenary Sessions focused on debates about the contents of the 26 planks and votes to include them in the National Plan of Action. Speakers for the Third Plenary Session on November 19 included Congresswoman Margaret M. Heckler and former Congresswoman and Assistant Secretary of State Patsy Mink, both of whom had cosponsored Public Law 64-167 (see documents 60 and 61). Planks debated and adopted included the Plank 15: Education (see Document 35) and the Plank 11: ERA (see Document 38). During the Fourth Plenary Session on November 20, anthropologist Margaret Mead and NCOIWY commissioners Cecilia Preciado-Burciaga and Carmen Delgado Votaw spoke (see documents 62 and 63). Burciaga and Votaw's speech focused on a bi-lingual dialogue "to honor the contributions of Hispanic women." Planks discussed during this session included Plank 12: Health (see Document 39) and Plank 17: Minority Women (see Document 44). The Fourth Plenary Session was also the occasion for debate on the controversial sexual preference plank. NOW president Eleanor Smeal and former NOW president Betty Friedan both spoke for the plank during a tense debate (see documents 50A and 50B). During the Closing Plenary Session on November 21, speakers included the labor activist Addie Wyatt and the Chair of the National American Indian and Alaskan Native Women's Conference, Billie Masters (see documents 64 and 65).

Part VI. The Legacy of Houston, 1977-1997

   Assessment of the long-term effects of the Houston conference and the National Plan of Action for Women allows us to see gains by anti-feminists and feminists. The NWC became almost synonymous with the ERA in media coverage and public opinion, just as "Houston" became shorthand for the feminist movement. With the failure of three additional states to ratify the ERA before the extended deadline of June 30, 1982, many commentators on the Right referred to the Houston conference as a failure and declared feminism dead. Although the women's movement clearly suffered major setbacks from the policies of the presidency of Ronald Reagan, women and men continued to work toward the goals set forth in the National Plan. In 1979, Caroline Bird in association with the NCOIWY published the National Plan of Action in a new abridged version of the official conference report, The Spirit of Houston. Called, What Women Want, it included a commentary on the conference and a history of women's rights by Gloria Steinem, a member of the NCOIWY and well-known feminist, with a collection of personal statements from women and men who attended the conference. Nearly ten years later in 1988, the ongoing National Women's Conference Committee produced an official retrospective on the 1977 NWC: A Decade of Achievement, 1977-1987: A Report on a Survey based on the National Plan of Action for Women, examining each plank and the progress made during the decade after the Houston NWC (see Document 66 and succeeding documents).[36]

   The 1988 study argued that considerable progress had been made, but almost exclusively by women working at the grassroots level. With the election of Ronald Reagan in 1980, right-wing policymakers reversed the Federal Government's support for the mainstream feminist goals of the NWC Plan.[37] The new hostility at the national level led women to shift their energies to local coalitions in the 1980s. The decline of governmental support for women's rights actually began before the election of Ronald Reagan. The 1988 report traces the erosion of Federal support for the Houston Plan from the point of President Carter's abrupt firing of Bella Abzug as co-chair of the National Advisory Committee For Women in 1978 because of her energetic lobbying of the Carter Administration for the Plan. Decade of Achievement argues that this action "ended any illusions that The National Plan of Action was being taken seriously by the Carter Administration."[38] Most of the National Advisory Committee members resigned in solidarity with Abzug, and the surviving Committee became largely ceremonial.

   The number of statewide networks grew tremendously during the decade 1975-1985 (see Document 66).[39] The neutralization of the president's National Advisory Committee pushed women activists away from seeking federal relief toward greater reliance on statewide networks of activists, a strategy that prepared activists for what was to come. As Decade of Achievement observed in 1988, "This has been especially important given the eight years of little progress at the federal level during the Reagan administration."[40] The evolution of state networks began with the state meetings in 1977 and was accelerated by contacts made at Houston. Sociologist and NWC Commissioner Alice Rossi surveyed 1,120 conference participants in February and March 1978 and found that on average each had made more than twenty new contacts with whom they had definite plans to keep in touch.[41] Among these new contacts, 63 percent were with women in the same state and 37 percent were with women from other states, which indicates both the growth in statewide networks as well as important coalitions with other women at a wider level.[42]

   Historian Winifred Wandersee has argued that the Houston Conference was the culmination of the organizational skills of liberal mainstream feminists, with an agenda influenced by grassroots social justice feminists, counterpoised by a contingent of antifeminists who portrayed all reformers as outside the mainstream.[43] These voices of the New Right dominated the national political agenda during the Reagan and Bush administrations of the 1980s. The Reagan Administration dismissed the National Plan for Action, the Equal Rights Amendment was defeated, and many of the Congresswomen who sponsored the National Women's Conference were denied reelection.

   Despite these setbacks, the 1988 National Women's Conference Committee report maintained that the Plan of Action continued to be a relevant and accurate gauge of women's needs because "it is a very pragmatic document (it names activities that can be counted) and because it really was a national consensus document."[44] The Committee concluded:

Officially, it was just the delegates in Houston in 1977 that ratified it. But the more you know about how the Houston Conference came about and what went on there, the clearer it becomes that the Plan really does represent the women's movement of the United States, as well as or better than any other similar agenda compiled in some other way. And when you take out the language about who should do it, and focus on what is being called for, you get a very nice, coherent, detailed, somewhat messy but very lovable version of what the American women's movement is all about.[45]

In retrospect, Gloria Steinem described the state meetings and the Houston Conference as more democratic and more representative than any state assembly or chamber of Congress.[46] Alice Rossi's 1978 survey found a high level of post-conference activity among Houston delegates when they returned home: fully 86 percent gave at least one talk about the conference, 60 percent were interviewed in a local paper, and 52 percent appeared on a local radio or television show.[47] The historical significance of the Conference still resonated. Rossi argued that

those who participate in social movements are likely to have sensitive appreciation of landmark events in their own history. Indeed, one empirical indicator of the vitality of a social movement may be the level of awareness and agreement among members concerning highpoint dates and events in its own history. … Major events like Seneca Falls, the ratification of suffrage, the founding of NOW, the Supreme Court decision on abortion, and perhaps the Houston national conference, help to shape and affirm a consciousness of one's own significance in history.[48]

Gloria Steinem summarized the historical significance of the Houston Conference in her "Introductory Statement" to the abridged official conference report, What Women Want: "For myself, Houston and all the events surrounding it have become a personal landmark in history; the sort of event one measures all other dates in life as being ‘before’ and ‘after.’ "[49]

   Twenty years after Houston a second report on progress related to the conference agenda was published by the National Women's Conference, Moving History Forward: An Update of the National Plan of Action of the National Women's Conference, Houston, Texas, Nov. 19-21, 1997. That review provided information about the status of issues related to each Houston plank (see Document 92). Related to "Employment," for example, it reported that "The Family and Medical Leave Act of 1993 allows workers to take up to 12 weeks of unpaid leave for an infant, spouse, parent or family member without losing their jobs." Connected to "Health" it reported that the new senior position of Deputy Assistant Secretary for Women's Health was created at the Public Health Service in 1994 to direct the Office of Women's Health. Linked to "Reproductive Freedom," it noted "the removal of the ‘gag rule’ in 1993, which prevented federally funded family planning clinics from providing full information on options for resolving unintended pregnancies." In these and other ways the report noted the importance of government initiatives -- positive and negative -- with regard to women. Houston's legacy consists of vibrant local actions by women for women, but it also includes better understanding and oversight of governmental policies pertaining to women.

   

Abstract	Document List	Zinsserintro