HOUSTON RETROSPECTIVE

...We must grant that this lack of awareness was in part the fault of the leaders of the movement...

...At almost the same time Ruby Duncan, who chairs the newly organized National Council on Women, Work and Welfare, had pointed out that the government's new welfare plan included no job training for people expected to work and did not expand child care facilities...

...He evidently mistakenly identified the Schafly position against 6 January 1978: 10 designers and ,000,000 AID imbalances in ign policy that )n Conference fhe most sen[ealey, retiring tholic Women great particiideas and difother for the lad in many, ley found this i some of the to all present s and that is 11 have a part think we all >ng experience ition...

...Sara Fitz of United Press International complained that a member of the National Commission, Jill Ruckelshaus, and ERAmerica co-chair Elizabeth (Liz) Carpenter "told reporters how the meeting ought to be covered...

...Margaret Mealey was speaking from a long experience in the world of women and their organization...

...Catherine's which is the second largest of all women's colleges in the country, and a pro-ERA delegate, bore out Ms...

...aid) shall be administered so as to give particular attention to those programs, projects and activities which tend to integrate women into the national economies of developing countries, thus improving their status and assisting the total development effort...

...One of the most interesting reactions is the complaint of reporters that feminist leaders tried to influence media coverage...

...One of the oncern for the l't know much erence but one r" who opposed lady...

...There has been a refusal of cooperation on the basis that the situation for women cannot improve without total change in the political system—largely a position of Marxist delegates—or until the New International Economic Order has been established...

...One of the columnists, known for his passionate concern for the black minority, murmured that he didn't know much about the leaders of the women's conference but one would have to concede that "Miz Schafly" who opposed the conference was "a very impressive lady...

...One of , ventured that the way things were between men and women in this country nowadays he thought it no wonder that homosexuality was on the increase...

...The Catholic presence drew somewhat grudging recognition from conference leaders...

...It was from this background also that Miss Mealey could answer James Kilpatrick's question on "Meet the Press" as to how her organization could go along with the demand for federally-funded child care...

...We have judges and lawyers, congresswomen, presidents' wives, federal office holders, college presidents coming to Houston, for heaven's sake," commented Liz Carpenter in exasperation at this request, "Is Elizabeth Taylor the only woman they've ever heard of...

...In the words of that good old feminine saying, "We shall see what we shall see...

...S. Government Printing Office, Washington, D.C...

...Women with children, she said, are blamed for not getting out of poverty but they have few options to do so, especially when child care facilities are rarely available...

...One of the deepest divisions and the oldest, however, seems to be in the process of being bridged...

...Most mothers of young children worked because they had to...

...I think the conference was marked by great participation of women who came with diverse ideas and different values and met and talked to each other for the first time...

...It was from this background that she could calmly counter Tom Brokaw's question on the "Today" show from Houston about whether she did not feel alone and strange as an IWY commissioner opposed to ERA...

...That is the division between the woman of achievement who has made her way in a man's world, and the women who organize themselves as women...

...Best of all, perhaps, is that there seems to have been some demonstration supporting the contention that, once women are equal, they may contribute to a more humane world...

...One of the most interesting and least-noted accommodations was demonstrated at the Women in Development consultation noted above, which preceded the IWY conference itself but was attended by many of the foreign observers and state chairwomen...

...Fortunately, the tide of interest grew and there were eventually almost as many reporters as delegates...

...In a fouryear period from 1972 to 1976 the United States Commission for Civil Rights resolved only one-fifth of the 871 discrimination complaints it received...

...HOUSTON RETROSPECTIVE Abigail McCarthy :J A report on the National Women's Conference The largest gathering of women in the nation's history, that of the National Women's Conference,.November 18-21 in Houston, is over...

...A ccomplishments What was accomplished at Houston...

...But women from places as far apart as Zambia and Fiji spoke most movingly of their need for literacy programs, programs for health and nutrition and leadership training—'basic needs...

...a significant few were completely unaware of it...

...The level of awareness among the prominent surely meant that the average television viewer and newspaper reader was in greater darkness...

...People were beyond establishing or accepting guilt, beyond accusing and apologizing...

...Few must have known, for example, that the conference was a response to the International Women's Year and Decade proclaimed by the United Nations...

...Yet, only a month before his writing that, a series of 51 booklets exploring the legal status of homemakers in this country became available from the Superintendent of Documents (U...

...The interrelationship of the status of women in the United States with the condition of women worldwide is one of the least understood facets of the women's movement...

...Their Abigail McCarthy, the author of Private Faces, Public Places, and, most recently, Circles, contributes a regular column to these pages...

...These priorities range all the way from food to control of armaments...

...3. The major victims of hunger in the world are women and girls...

...It is unfortunate but true that we live in an age of public relations, so much so that it takes a massive continuous effort to focus public attention on any human needs...

...Representatives of Network, a social action lobby of nuns, went to the conference prepared to distribute statements by Catholic feminists, Sister Elizabeth Carroll, RSM, and Mary Burke...

...In that we all have a part and can make our voices heard again...

...It is in the context of the above-listed imbalances in domestic law, education, welfare and foreign policy that the thrust and achievement at the Houston Conference must be considered...

...The Percy Amendment to the Foreign Assistance Act specifies: In recognition of the fact that women in developing countries play a significant role in economic production, family support and, the overall development process, (U.S...

...Thus Ann O'Donnell, chairperson of the Missouri Right to Life Committee and a delegate, could present the pro-life position with considerable effectiveness and command a hearing...

...It was unreasonable to fault a public-relations push to further identify the barriers to women's equality in view of the apathy, ignorance and indifference which persists...

...Less than a month earlier PEER, part of the National Organization for Women's Legal Defense and Education Fund, documented government failure to enforce »ex discrimination laws in the nation's schools...

...They seemed to be agreed that the time had come to get on with the objectives leading to worldwide equality for women...

...But the emphasis remained a problem...

...A man in Alaska cannot be fined more than $25 for beating his wife...

...And it was she who presented the resolution on rape to the conference for vote...

...Houston marked a stage in woman's political experience, too...

...From what I saw and heard there, and from what I had read and heard before the conference, I must conclude that both leaders and press staff had reason to fear, first of all, that the conference might not be adequately covered, and secondly, that the coverage might be hopelessly skewed...

...Many of the women struggling for the new economic order and for equality in Third World countries were educated in Christian colleges largely funded by U.S...

...efforts to prevent the latter might have been tactless, but they were understandable in the light of only two instances among many...

...I would have wondered at the spirit of accommodation shown," said Elso Chaney, deputy co-ordinator of Commonweal: 11 the Women in Development office, "if I had not attended a like meeting in Mexico just prior to this one...

...It was valuable, too, as evidence that extremist Phyllis Schafly is not the voice of the majority of Catholic women—an impression often given by her own followers and by anti-Catholic feminists...

...Such federally financed conferences, whether on women's issues or children and youth or urban policy generally give a public-relations push to ideas that don't need it and generate so much controversy over other issues that they create a public impression of even more discord than actually exists...

...Sally Quinn of the Washington Post complained, on the other hand, that many reporters were too obvious in showing their sympathy for the feminist cause...

...It was also apparent at Houston that the line between the housewife and careerist is weakening...

...Just recently business columnist Sylvia Porter, writing of a meeting of corporate women, noted ruefully that these women found themselves uncomfortable at a meeting dominated by women...

...20402...

...Among the delegates at large with whom she sat, Mary Burke also noted a new responsiveness and a willingness to come to grips with the problems of family in a more productive way...

...The booklets list inequity after absurd inequity—none of them apparently worth the concern of the irascible editorialist...

...Consider how daunting the editorial in the Washington Post which greeted the conference on opening day: The National Women's Conference, which opens in Houston today, was a poor idea from the start...

...It is very hard to gauge the result from press reports so far...

...The organization has been admittedly, I think, slow to recognize some of the newly discovered (or rediscovered in different context) problems of women—the legal obliteration of married women in many jurisdictions, for example, and inequities in education and employment, as well as the peculiar difficulties of the divorced, widowed and aged women—but for a good part of the half century since suffrage the members have stood shoulder to shoulder with union women, other church women, and women of major organizations like the Business and Professional Women on many social issues such as child care, family services and protective legislation for working women...

...She was also speaking from the vantage point of an historical perspective shared by few of the converts to the "New Feminism...

...In the end it is certainly hard to assess the success of a conference which was part media event, part issue politics and not clearly related to the world of real politics...

...Interestingly enough, and I suppose not surprising, the strongest criticism seems to come from women reporters...

...The Catholic women at the conference— an estimated fourth of the delegates—were supported by a statement from Bishop Thomas Kelly, general secretary of the National Conference of Catholic Bishops...

...Carol Richards of Gannett News Service called them amateurish in "trying to tell experienced women reporters how to cover this story...

...Forre were eventugates...

...The women seemed content to concede their differences and to seek ways of joining with each other to influence policy in international relations and in international aid programs so that the priorities of women be taken into account...

...And more than one woman journalist noted with dismay that many of the delegates at Houston were not experienced travelers and that "they did not have credit cards...

...Many of these were addressed in the Plan of Action presented at Houston...

...Kilpatrick's questions, she said sensibly that she thought that questions about homosexuals were matters of civil rights rather than of women's rights per se...

...It is a fact perhaps more easily apprehended by women than by men—and mainstream women at that—because the oldest of women's organizations stemmed from support groups for foreign missions and are worldwide...

...This is .05 percent of the AID budget or 1/20 of one percent to serve the majority of those of the world's population ostensibly aided...

...This is not to say that honest feminist feeling on all sides is not outraged by the stances assumed by men of the church in the past and even now...

...We do not always work in total agreement, but that does not mean that we cannot work together for •the things on which we do agree...

...But the fact remains—there was more accommodation and unanimity at Houston than most people had previously thought possible...

...No" she answered quietly, "for many, many years we have been working with other organizations in coalitions...

...These off the top of the head opinions of men who share in forming the public mind made it clear that the media had not done a very good job either of learning about the conference or of informing the general public of its scope and historic significance...

...Interestingly enough since this meeting occurred John J. Gilligan, who heads the Agency for International Development, has announced an intensive new effort to see that agricultural programs now being designed take into account the role of women, and the office of Women in Development has been moved into the Policy and Planning Coordination Bureau so that it can review all programs...

...The movement has not given enough reflection to the long-term structural consequences for society of changing roles for women...

...Liz Carpenter in her capacity as co-chair of the ERA coalition was inclined to be testy about Catholic opposition to the ERA resolution in the conference plan, but she noted warmly in her "Meet the Press" appearance the support given to ERA by nuns—"the Catholic women who know the realities of running institutions and who are closest to the poor...

...The Houston meeting was scarcely over when Osservatore Romano, the quasi-official voice of the Vatican, editorialized solemnly and apparently apropos of nothing, that woman's proper sphere was the home and she was happiest in it...

...Any such consultation attended by Third World delegates in the past decade has been marked by bitter confrontations and highly inflammatory and charged accusations against the developed nations...

...The most sensible assessment was made by Margaret Mealey, retiring director of the National Council of Catholic Women and herself an IWY participant...

...In the light of this, AID created an Office for Women in Development, headed by Arvonne Fraser...

...Only a few days before the conference one of the leading women reporters for a national news magazine was on the phone begging for something, anything, she could tell her editors that would persuade them to cover the conference at all...

...He evisition against federal funding as a general Catholic position...

...Title IX of the 1972 Education Act was supCommonweal: 9 posed to eliminate inequality for women in the educational system but an act is only as good as its enforcement...

...I was interested," said Mary Burke in a conversation subsequent to the meeting, "that all the replaced resolutions, those rewritten by those most concerned delegates actually present at the conference—and passed— were resolutions having to do with the disadvantaged in our society—the disabled women, older women, minority women, women on welfare and in poverty...

...The super-feminist demand for unanimity is unrealistic and self-defeating...

...More than a hundred years ago Jane Grey Swisshelm, one of the most feared and respected of abolitionist editors, expressed her dislike of the Seneca Falls meeting—the first national feminist meeting—and its successors...

...Almost unanimously and almost naively —or so it seemed to an observer formed in our maledominated culture—they spoke of women's need for economic self-sufficiency "so that her man will respect her," as one Asian put it...

...and women of like achievement from Judge Sarah Hughes and Margaret Mead to Barbara Jordan were glad to speak to the Houston delegates...

...A woman who murders her husband under similar circumstances is not so lucky...

...They repeatedly pointed out that aid programs seldom helped women in agriculture, and often forced them out of it...

...All these things mark real progress...

...One of the authors, apparently sunk in gloom, ventured that 6 January 1978: 8 been tactless, lit of only two ice one of the news magazine ;, anything, she : them to cover ree largest netof its morning eone of "high ibeth Taylor, rswomen, presilege presidents commented Liz t, "Is Elizabeth eard of...

...Few knew that both the state meetings had, and the national conference would, address matters of vital interest to women other than abortion, ERA and lesbianism...

...I think we all learned more about how to do that...

...En route to Houston I had participated in a symposium on quite another subject in another city—a symposium attended by national columnists, best-selling authors, professors from leading universities—most of them men...

...But the ited in a symmother city—a ists, best-selling shies—most of scussion of the of the particisignificant few somewhat more ote...

...The generally civilized behavior of the delegates, the concern about important human issues and the serious attitude that most delegates took toward their work—all this was impressive...

...She pointed out that the NCCW had faced the facts...

...Mary Burke noted that the Catholic press in particular gave very little attention to the state meetings and focused almost entirely on the conflicts there...

...In my own experience, I have found leaders of the movement extremely arbitrary in failing to recognize that many women who might oppose them on the three issues—or even one of them—are, nevertheless, their allies in most other areas...

...But they were responsive to the women who actually experienced disadvantage, were willing to let them define their needs, and accepted their remedies for them...

...She was an historical to the "New admittedly, I 'ly discovered problems of :d women in ities in educaiar difficulties m—but for a the members nion women, organizations ten on many ices and prowas from this 'om Brokaw's ouston about s as an IWY , many years ions in coalip-eement, but together for Miss Mealey )n "Meet the o along with re...

...Professional feminists commented in surprised admiration of Margaret Mealey's TV appearances...

...Such complains must be put in context...

...Nevertheless, once these things are granted, the fact remains that those charged with satisfying the public's right to know had done very little to make the picture of this historic woman's meeting clear and complete...

...Thus sexism, both subtle and blatant, is a primary cause of starvation and malnutrition...

...The movement has too frequently addressed women's questions in an individualistic, pragmatic style, as if women formed just one more special interest group," wrote Mary Burke in America just before the meeting...

...Nun administrators, like Sister Alberta Huber, president of St...

...Surely few realize that the five million dollars, so often cited as a waste of the taxpayers' money by opponents, actually went for fifty-six state and territorial meetings as well as for the Houston meeting itself...

...The situation in the area of international interdependence—a large concern of the women's conference— is even worse...

...The Post editorial writer, evidently a gradualist of the old school and more opinionated than informed, held that "the more flagrant kinds of sex discrimination are gradually being dealt with by Congress, the courts and many states...

...The same thing was true there...

...Columnist David Broder noted that women, both of the right and the left, concerned themselves with more than purely feminist issues at both meetings in Houston, have learned a great deal about pressure politics, and are now a political force courted by both parties...

...They knew, also, that the conferees had been labeled lesbian...

...4. 92.5 percent of the professionals, designers and the decision makers dealing with the $576,000,000 AID program are men...

...Women, although they have the problems of minority, do, after all, constitute the majority of the population and remain deeply divided on many questions...

...2. Population policies are conceived by men and most projects are directed and funded by men...

...they face the fact that it is being taken from them by economic circumstance and changed life span...

...Most of the delegates were middle class...

...There was some cursory discussion of the upcoming women's meeting there...

...Conflict and polarization around the three disruptive issues, she noted, meant that these issues had never been clearly discussed in the state conferences and that other significant topics did not receive the attention they should have had...

...Secondly, few must have known that it had been mandated by the Congress and planned by a commission appointed by the President to identify the barriers to equality and to recommend legislation...

...This is a far cry from the days of the Lady Bountiful...

...In Alabama a man who finds his wife guilty of the latter and kiHs her is not guilty of murder—but only of manslaughter punishable by one to ten years imprisonment...

...The presence of so many moderate women of various faiths and persuasions had as much to do, it seems to me, with defusing the potential conflicts, and legitimizing the meeting in the minds of the public as did the presence of the eminently respectable three First Ladies who were there...

...Miss Mealey's affirmative presence, as well as that of the presence of the new president of NCCW and its executive director as delegates did much to put Catholic women in the center of the movement for justice for women...

...at the moment, only the federal government seemed like a promising source of funds for the quality care needed, and the problem was urgent...

...Chairwoman Bella Abzug insisted that they be given equal time in the debate on reproductive freedom, the catch-all term for the resolution calling for public funding of birth control, abortion and pregnancy care for the poor, and for sex education in the schools...

...Most of the participants were extremely vague about it...

...Affirmative action on some of the resolutions was certainly not satisfactory to all present —but the legislative process still prevails and that is where the change will come...

...And yet it was those other concerns— real concerns about inequality—which had brought thousands of unorganized women to the state meetings and an unprecedented number of observers to Houston...

...I believe that, just as they had in many, although not all, of the state meetings, they found this mutually profitable...

...I spent part of the two days before the conference with the leaders of the ERA coalition and some time with members of the press staff...

...High feeling swirled around the three controverted issues—ERA, abortion and lesbianism—and one-issue people were outraged on one side or the other...

...There was very little of that at the development meeting...

...Carpenter's contention...

...No one supposed that this was based on any survey of women's experience and opinion...

...They also passed out "I am an ERA Catholic" buttons...

...In contrast to NCCW the Leadership Conference of Women Superiors has long been on record in support of the amendment...

...Women are the majority of the poor in every country of the world...

...Consider the relationship of powerlessness here to misery abroad, then in only one area of foreign relations —that of the Agency for International Development...

...Of those resolved, more than a third took three years or more to be completed...

...Although obviously troubled by another of Mr...

...They were not there to place blame, however, but to establish networks by which women could help women...

...According to her, Kay Mills of Newhouse News Service fumed that the two had maligned some of the best women reporters in the country by lumping them with all the "kooks...

...Of those somewhat more aware, two made comments worthy of note...

...And one of the three largest networks was reluctant to devote any part of its morning program to the conference unless someone of "high visibility" could appear—preferably Elizabeth Taylor...

...What these speakers did know was that controversy swirled about the conference, most of it engendered by Phyllis Schafly and her Eagle Forum allied with segments of the pro-life movement and with conservative political groups...

...At the time of the beginning of the conference, however, Wilma Scott Heide in attendance at a development consultation planned by this WID office could point to the following distressing facts: 1. The budget for Women in Development office of AID for this fiscal year is $300,000...

...It was undoubtedly in recognition of the diversity and the general good will of the Catholic women present that, as Betty Friedan wrote later, "In the breaking of stereotypes that took place in Houston, some feminists began to have a new respect for the feelings of women who do oppose abortion...

...These identify flagrant injustices which are far from being dealt with today...

...In Houston, this was to mean that almost all the women delegates were allied on at least twenty-three or twenty-four of the twenty-six proposals in the original Plan of Action...

...The most glaring of these inequities in laws affecting homemakers occur "in questions of inheritance, property rights, support and alimony, rape and spouse abuse and in legal penalties related to adultery...

...Housewives are losing the fear that the shelter of a home will be taken from them by feminism...

...The difference was, however, that the corporate women were meeting to form a women's network, thus finally admitting that women will never go all the way in a man's world alone...

...Houston was, said reporter Megan Rosenfeld, "not an avowed feminist," an "intriguing glimpse into what a world with power shared equally might hold...