page_title: 1977 National Women's Conference
section_title: Event
hierarchical_section_title: 1977 National Women's Conference / Event
caption_attribution_description: English: American Women on the Move: Program Cover of National Women's Conference 1977
context_page_description: The National Women's Conference of 1977 was a four-day event during November 18-21, 1977, as organized by the National Commission on the Observance of International Women's Year. The conference drew around, 2,000 delegates along with 15,000-20,000 observers in Houston, Texas. The United States Congress approved $5 million in public appropriations for both the state and national conferences as HR 9924, sponsored by Congresswoman Patsy Mink, which Ford signed into law. In 1977 at the start of his presidency, President Jimmy Carter chose a new Commission and appointed Congresswoman Bella Abzug to head it. Numerous events were held over the next two years, culminating in the National Women's Conference.
  The conference represents a turning point for the political history of second-wave feminism in the United States. A number of controversial issues, including abortion rights and sexual orientation, were flashpoints in the event's program. Historian Marjorie J. Spruill argues that the anti-feminists led by Phyllis Schlafly had a more successful follow-up. They moved the Republican Party to a more socially conservative position.
context_section_description: The goal was to hammer out a "Plan of Action" to be presented to the Carter Administration and Congress for consideration and/or adoption. Each of the twenty-six Resolutions on Women's Rights in the Plan was proposed to the attendees and voted upon collectively. The Conference was chaired by Congresswoman Bella Abzug.
  The opening ceremony speakers included: First Ladies Rosalynn Carter, Betty Ford and Lady Bird Johnson, activists Coretta Scott King, Bella Abzug, Betty Friedan, Barbara Jordan, Liz Carpenter, and Jean Stapleton. Maya Angelou read the Declaration of American Women 1977.
  Heated debates ensued over 26 major topics addressed at the conference, such as the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA), reproductive rights, the nuclear family, child care funding, sexual orientation, education reform, and the rights of disabled, minority, and aging women. At the conference, there was also a lengthy discussion about nuclear disarmament and a series of talks featuring women who had reached important positions of responsibility in government such as chair of Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC), Assistant Secretary for the United States Department of Commerce, and head of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).
  On the other side of Houston, at the Astrodome, almost fifteen thousand conservative women under the leadership of Phyllis Schlafly held their own counter-conference in which they vowed to uphold traditional pro-family values. The competing Houston conferences demonstrated the discord among women over key issues, and Schlafly's message that women had something to lose, not something to gain, from feminism continued to resonate in the increasingly conservative political climate. Nowhere was this clearer than in the battles over reproductive freedom and the Equal Rights Amendment, the issues most associated with feminism in the public mind in the 1970s.
  An abundance of people attended the 1977 National Women's Conference and "delegates ranged from students and homemakers attending their first women's conference to Presidents of National Women's groups." The head of the conference was Congresswoman Bella Abzug who spoke in front of more than 20,000 of her fellow advocates. 
  Many people who were interested in feminism were at the 1977 National Women's Conference to support women's rights. The inspiring author Betty Friedan attended the conference, the feminist Gloria Steinem attended the conference along with a new feminist leader Eleanor Smeal. Celebrities in education and sports like the anthropologist Margaret Mead, the advocate for women in sports Billie Jean King, the poet Maya Angelou, Commissioner Jean Stapleton, Commissioner Coretta Scott King. Congresswomen included Bella Abzug, Republican Jill Ruckelshaus, Congresswoman Margaret Heckler, Mary Louise, Mary Crisp, Republican Elly Peterson, Democrat Elizabeth Holtzman, Pat Schroeder, Lindy Boggs, Martha Griffiths, and Barbara Jordan. Past, and at the time, current first ladies Rosalynn Carter, Betty Ford, and Lady Bird Johnson were also in attendance at this conference.
  All of these women banded together in the Conference to create the 26 planks described above and discuss the rights of women as well as how women should not be discriminated against.   
caption: American Women on the Move, the cover of the program for the National Women's Conference
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