The National Women's Conference and Surrounding Second Wave Feminist Events

Founded by Mary McLeod Bethune, the National Council of Negro Women was one of the first of its kind. It was a grassroots, community built organization that put women of color at the forefront of its movements, demanded to be heard, and fought for similar issues as the other coalitions in the early Feminist movements.

https://ncnw.org/ncnw/our-history

Betty Friedan's publishing of her book, "The Feminine Mystique," is commonly referenced as one of the kick-off points for Second Wave feminism, as it began the movement for consciousness raising. This book encouraged women to start speaking about common issues, then start raising their common issues to systematic failures, embracing ideas of the personal being political.

Picture: https://www.biblio.com/book/feminine-mystique-friedan-betty/d/703437666

In 1963, President John F. Kennedy signs into law the Equal Pay Act, which forbids employers from paying different wages to employees of different genders who are working the same positions with the same responsibilities and skills. While this was signed into law in 1963, the issue still has not been resolved and was a discussion point during the NWC.

Declared by the UN, 1975 was the International Women's Year and the start of the annual celebration of International Women's Day (March 8). This was recognized on an international front, and in the US by President Gerald Ford, however, nothing of consequence came of this event until the NWC in 1977, which worked in tandem with the incoming Carter administration.

Picture: http://catchingthewave.library.harvard.edu/items/show/1499 via Bettye Lane, who also captured my artifact.

The National Women's Conference took place in Houston, Texas, and it was the first conference of women to discuss rights since the Seneca Falls convention. The conference was led by two main groups of delegates from all states with goals to establish more laws promoting equal rights, but with different ideologies. There was the "pro-plan" group and the "pro-family" group who disputed the major topics such as the ERA, or Equal Rights Amendment, legal abortion, lesbian rights, education, and more in order to make recommendations for the progression and rights of women and gender minorities in the law.

Picture courtesy of Houston Chronicle via https://tshaonline.org/handbook/online/articles/pwngq .

Carol Bellamy is one of the women pictured in my artifact taken at the National Women's Conference, and like Burstein, Bellamy also hails from New York City and served in politics there prior to the NWO. Bellamy spent 13 years as an elected public official, including a term as a Senator, before she became the first woman to be elected as the president of the New York City Council. She served in this position for several years before running for the office of Mayor of New York City, and after that was unsuccessful, she went on to be Executive Director for UNICEF, Director of the United States Peace Corps, and has received multiple awards on an international level for her ceaseless commitment to change.

https://www.unicef.org/about/who/index_bio_bellamy.html
https://en.unifrance.org/directories/person/372785/carol-bellamy (pic)

Karen Burstein is one of the two women pictured in my artifact image as she was one of the key delegates in the National Women's Conference from New York, where she was heavily invested in politics and the justice system. She worked as a Senator for New York first, was promoted by Mayor Koch to Auditor General, then again by Dinkins to be a judge for the New York City Family Court. This all prefaced her run for Attorney General in 1994, where she was leading in the primaries only to be beaten by a slim percentage at the last moment by her opponent, Denis Vacco, which is suspected because of her sexual orientation as a lesbian and Vacco's "gutter politics" and conservatism.

https://www.nytimes.com/1994/11/09/nyregion/1994-elections-new-york-state-attorney-general-vacco-comes-behind-win-against.html
https://alchetron.com/Karen-Burstein
https://www.stonewallvets.org/KarenBurstein.htm (picture)

In modern continuation of these feminist movements, the Women's March took place in Washington DC, New York City, Los Angeles, Atlanta, and other major cities on January 20th, 2018, following the election of current president Trump. Gathering multiple thousands of people per march, the Women's March focused on sexual assault advocacy in 2018, the importance of diversity, and more ideals we see historically in feminist movement.s

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/01/20/us/womens-march.html
https://womensmarch.com
Picture: https://www.cnn.com/2018/01/20/politics/dc-womens-march/index.html