Women March on Houston

Feminists and their foes square off around the big national meeting

Nothing like it has been seen in the U.S. in at least 129 years—or ever. In driving rain, while a band belted out The Yellow Rose of Texas, a bronze torch made its final lap in front of Houston's Albert Thomas Convention Center late last week in the strong hands of Tennis Star Billie Jean King. She was greeted by some 2,000 determined women chanting "ERA! ERA!"—for the Equal Rights Amendment. Puffed New York City's hefty Bella Abzug, who trotted the last stretch with Billie Jean: "We are here running for equality. We'll never run for cover on this journey."

So ended a 2,612-mile feminine relay that began last September in Seneca Falls, N.Y., where a doughty band of suffragettes had held the first national women's conference in 1848. And so began—with hoopla, bombast, some unsisterly rancor and, overall, deadly serious intentions—the largest political conference of women ever assembled in the country. The nearly 2,000 delegates and more than 12,000 observers who later jammed Sam Houston Coliseum for the three-day National Women's Conference provided some answers to Freud's vexing question: What does a woman want?

Most want quite a few things—and some women would rather not have them at all. By their votes, it was clear that most delegates want passage of the ERA, accessible and safe abortion, Government funding for day care, and a host of other measures promoting greater social and economic equality for their sex.

Women of all professions and persuasions descended on the city: feminists of the National Organization for Women (N.O.W.), compliant "total women," housewives, antiabortionists. In a remarkable scene, three wives of Presidents—Rosalynn Carter, Betty Ford and Lady Bird Johnson—paid homage to the women's movement at the opening session as delegates waved handkerchiefs and colored balloons. Feminist celebrities included Conference Chairwoman Abzug, Gloria Steinem, Betty Friedan and Susan B. Anthony II. On the other side of Houston, more than 15,000 women who opposed feminist goals gathered in a counterconference. Said Phyllis Schlafly, the Alton, Ill., housewife and law student who has become the spearhead of U.S. antifeminism: "If people really find out what the movement is, it will be on the skids. We're here to show they do not represent the view of the American people."

Getting the view of women was what the conference was all about. Its recommendations are to go to President Carter by next March. The law that set up the federally supported conference stipulates that the President submit recommendations to Congress within 120 days.

The meeting was conceived in 1975 as an expression of the U.N.-declared International Women's Year. Congress provided $5 million in funding. A total of 56 state and territorial meetings elected delegates for Houston and drew up a "National Plan of Action" that would "identify the barriers that prevent women from participating fully and equally in all aspects of national life"—and recommend ways to remove them.