Democratizing Politics: Mapping the Stories and Significance of the 1977 National Women’s Conference

FAIN: RZ-279848-21

University Of Houston (Houston, TX 77204-3067)
Nancy Beck Young (Project Director: December 2020 to present)
Leandra Zarnow (Co Project Director: February 2021 to present)

Preparation of an open-access website on the legislative, political, and social impact of the 1977 National Women’s Conference. (36 months)

“Democratizing Politics” is a multi-year, multi-state, multi-institutional effort led by the University of Houston to analyze the thousands of participants at and legacy of the 1977 National Women’s Conference (NWC). Our open-access digital humanities website launches in March, 2021, and our fully-featured website will be complete by 2027, NWC’s 50th anniversary. Congress created the NWC with bipartisan support, appropriating $5 million and mandating a diversity requirement for conference delegates. The NWC stands out in U.S. history as the most diverse and only federally funded convention of American women. In 1977, 2,000 delegates, elected by 150,000 participants at 56 lead-up state and territory meetings, convened in Houston to outline 26 policy action areas to present to President Jimmy Carter. One of the greatest experiments in civic engagement, the NWC modeled democracy in action. The participants offered an expansive agenda to make the nation more inclusive and the U.S. government more responsive.

Associated Products

Sharing Stories from 1977: Putting the National Women's Conference on the Map (Web Resource)
Title: Sharing Stories from 1977: Putting the National Women's Conference on the Map
Author: Elizabeth A. Rodwell
Author: Nancy Beck Young
Author: Leandra Zarnow
Author: Peggy Lindner
Abstract: Our project website contains biographical essays, interpretive essays, and (eventually) demographic data visualizations as well as access to a searchable database for users who wish to query our dataset for their own research. Sharing Stories from 1977 captures the history of the 1977 National Women’s Conference, the only federally funded, bipartisan supported, and most diverse gathering of American women in U.S. history. This conference was held as the U.S. corollary to the United Nations International Women’s Year initiative after the first World Conference on Women in Mexico City. Today, it stands out for the comprehensive National Plan of Action passed by delegates, addressing issues that speak to our own times from LGBTQ rights to childcare. Our ambition is to present all the stories of all conference attendees by the NWC’s fiftieth anniversary in 2027. In addition to the almost 2,000 elected national delegates, we also want to include the 150,000 plus participants in lead up state and territorial meetings. Finally, we are incorporating the thousands more staff, volunteers, onsite observers, international dignitaries, presidentially-appointed commissioners, journalists, and three First Ladies. We also plan to track the impact of the NWC in two important ways: by tracing the legislative outcomes of the 26 policy areas outlined in The Spirit of Houston report and by examining the imprint the NWC left on advocacy networks and political careers. We are finding, through initial research, that not only were Americans more civically engaged in the 1970s than scholars assume, “being there” in Houston was a significant catalyst in many people’s lives.
Year: 2022
Primary URL: https://sharingstories1977.uh.edu

"Sharing Stories from 1977: Creating a Feminist Digital Humanities Project" (Article)
Title: "Sharing Stories from 1977: Creating a Feminist Digital Humanities Project"
Author: Judy Tzu-Chun Wu
Author: Caitlyn Jones
Author: Peggy Lindner
Author: Liz Rodwell
Author: Nancy Beck Young
Author: Leandra Zarnow
Abstract: This roundtable article explains how and why our team undertook work on this project and what we hope suers will glean from it.
Year: 2022
Primary URL: https://search.alexanderstreet.com/wass/issue/1011731520
Primary URL Description: This is the URL for the journal issue in which our roundtable article appears.
Access Model: subscription access
Format: Journal
Periodical Title: Women and Social Movements in the United States, 1600-2000
Publisher: Alexander Street Press

---