Research

In November 1977, the US government for the first time in its history asked women what they wanted. Thousands of women from every state and territory descended into Houston, Texas, to respond. In the process, they crafted a plan of action that would set the tone for federal policy for decades to come and ushered in a new form of intersectional feminism years before legal scholar Kimberlé Crenshaw coined the term. This moment, known as the National Women’s Conference (NWC), was the first and only federally funded conference dedicated to women’s issues. It was where the phrase “women of color” was first used to amplify the common experience of discrimination faced by Black, Hispanic, Asian American and Pacific Islander, and Indigenous women. It was where lesbians and women with disabilities fused their own civil rights movements with the larger women’s rights movement. It was where rural women brought to light the gender discrimination in agriculture laws and urban women fought for universal childcare. It was even where conservative women showcased their own political power as they organized in opposition to the conference. In short, the NWC, often referred to simply as “Houston,” gave the nation a glimpse of what the United States would look like under a matriarchy.

In 1977, NWC organizers dubbed the gathering a "second Seneca Falls." Decades later in her autobiography, feminist writer Gloria Steinem called it “the most important event nobody knows about.”

I use the NWC as a vehicle to explore the divide between personal remembrance and national forgetting. Through oral histories, archival research, and media analysis, I examine how organizers presented the conference as a historic moment to the public and how this messaging was refracted by other stakeholders. Both during and after the NWC, planners used practices such as preservation, photography, and public commemorations to create a historical narrative of unity, triumph, and patriotism. However, their vision of the conference clashed with other attendees, politicians, journalists, scholars, and filmmakers who created divergent meanings of the event. The NWC occurred against a backdrop of change in the American landscape that included media and political polarization, a growing apathy toward social movements at the national level, and the expansion of a grassroots feminist movement where multiple and overlapping identities made a singular narrative nearly impossible to cultivate. This swell of change and the repeated clashes over historical narratives created a kaleidoscope of meanings about the NWC that ultimately made it fall through the cracks of our national story. 

In our modern landscape where historical narratives and the very definition of equality are being tested, this historic gathering stands out as one of the most democratic occasions this country has seen, put together and proffered through the work of women. By understanding how it was forgotten, we can now work to remedy its silence.