Rhode Island Organizing Committee for the National Women's Conference (Mss. Gr. 221)

Historical note

The National Women's Conference held in Houston Texas (November 18-21, 1977) was organized after a 1975 United Nations "International Year of the Woman" conference was held in Mexico City. The UN later extended the "year" to an "International Decade for Women." Through a bill sponsored by Bella Abzug (1920-1998) five million dollars was allocated for women in each of the fifty states to meet and then convene nationally. At the conference, there were two thousand delegates and over 15,000 observers.

It concluded with a 24 point plan that broadly supported women’s equal rights to education, healthcare, minority rights, rights of older women, and sexual and reproductive freedom. The ultimate goals were to engender support for the passage of the Equal Rights Amendment that had become politically stagnant (it still has not been ratified to this date), unify women with competing agendas, and to squash the conservative anti feminist movement lead at the time by Phyllis Schalfly (1924- ) at a competing conference held in the Houston Astrodome. The women seemed to accomplish most of their goals through thorough planning and congenial, if at times contentious, discussion over issues that affected all women. While the plan was not binding in any way, Betty Friedan (1921-2006) wrote of it and the conference in general in The New Republic, December 10, 1977 "it was heady, invigorating and infused the whole movement with new energy."