Around this time 38 years ago, about 20,000 people—2,000 elected delegates representing every state and territory and 18,000 observers from 56 other countries—gathered in an arena in Houston, Texas, to conduct America’s first federally funded National Women’s Conference. The conference ran from Nov. 18 to 21 1977, and held the goal of developing a Plan of Action for Women’s Rights to present to Congress.
“Women in every state and territory would be invited to debate and decide such contentious issues as reproductive freedom and abortion, welfare rights, lesbian rights, domestic violence, and the exclusion of domestic workers from labor laws,” Gloria Steinem writes in her recently released novel entitled My Life on the Road. In her book, Steinem reflects on her life as a traveller, activist, and journalist, and describes to her reader what actually happened at the National Women’s Conference in 1977—an event, she explains, that is rarely talked about.
Congresswomen Bella Abzug, Shirley Chisholm, and Patsy Mink were in charge of writing a piece of legislation. The three women requested that the American government provide funding for 56 conferences over the span of two years—these conferences were to be open to the public, racially representative, and presentational of economic status. At these 56 conferences, delegates would be elected to take certain issues to the National Women’s Conference, where the Plan of Action would be structured and appointed.
Steinem wrote that this conference was “probably the most geographically, racially, and economically representative body this nation has ever seen—much more so than Congress.”
This was “the first time that minority women from all over the world could meet and discuss issues in the same room,” including women from Spanish-speaking groups from across America and Native American women from all over the country.
In her novel, Steinem describes a unique role she played in the conference, by which she was appointed by a few women to act as a delegate between groups: her job was to run around the conference centre, collecting notes on issues brought up by different groups. The end result was compiling a list that would be presented at the conference in front of the 20, 000 people audience.
“While the African American women raised umbrella issues of racism and poverty, the Asian and Pacific American Caucus added language barriers, sweatshops, and the isolation of women who came to this country as servicemen’s wives. The Hispanic Caucus spoke about Chicanas being deported away from their American-born children, Puerto Ricans who were treated as if they were not American citizens, and Cubans cut off from families by tensions with their home country. Somehow, this all had to go into one substitute Minority Plank that could come to the floor and be voted on by all delegates.”
Many issues were discussed and voted on at this conference, though a key point that occurred was affirming lesbians’ rights. The National Women’s Conference of 1977 was the place where Betty Friedan, writer of The Feminine Mystique, took the floor and put an end to her long-going stance that lesbian women should not be included in the Women’s Movement. The conference supported lesbians’ rights for equal opportunity and the right to childcare.
Another key point was the majority that voted on reproductive rights, saying that the purpose of sex was not only for reproduction but also a way of “pleasuring and bonding.”
The National Women’s Conference played a large role in the Women’s Rights Movement, though it is not often discussed. “It may take the prize as the most important event nobody knows about,” Steinem writes.