Schenken Suzanne O’Dea. From Suffrage to the Senate: An Encyclopedia of American Women in Politics (2 Volumes)

Подождите немного. Документ загружается.

lobbied Congress for a guaranteed national income and for resources to

allow welfare recipients to manage their own lives, and they protested

policies that invaded welfare recipients’ privacy. The organization’s suc-

cesses included an increase in the benefit level of the food stamp program

and the addition of a cost-of-living provision in the program. NWRO also

won cases in the U.S. Supreme Court, including one that gave welfare re-

cipients the right to a hearing before the termination of their benefits.

Bankruptcy in 1975 forced the closing of the national headquarters.

References Slavin, ed., U.S. Women’s Interest Groups (1995).

National Woman Suffrage Association

Founded in 1869 by Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B.Anthony, the Na-

tional Woman Suffrage Association (NWSA) resulted from a conflict be-

tween the abolitionist and women’s rights movements over the Fifteenth

Amendment. Conflicts had first emerged over the Fourteenth Amend-

ment’s inclusion of the word male in its identification of citizens. When the

Fifteenth Amendment was proposed, it limited its guarantees for voting

rights to former slaves and did not include women. Suffragists Anthony

and Stanton supported providing voting rights to former slaves, but they

wanted the amendment to also include women. They appealed to the abo-

litionists and Republicans with whom they had long been allied but to no

avail, and the amendment was introduced and ratified without including

women in its provisions. To organize opposition against the amendment

and to organize support for a woman suffrage amendment, Anthony and

Stanton formed NWSA. In response, women’s rights advocates who sup-

ported the Fifteenth Amendment, even though it did not include women,

organized the American Woman Suffrage Association. The two groups

merged into the National American Woman Suffrage Association in 1890.

See also American Woman Suffrage Association; Anthony, Susan Brownell;

Fifteenth Amendment; National American Woman Suffrage Association; Nine-

teenth Amendment; Stanton, Elizabeth Cady

References Flexner and Fitzpatrick, Century of Struggle: The Woman’s Rights

Movement in the United States, enlarged edition (1996).

National Woman’s Loyal League

See Woman’s National Loyal League

National Woman’s Party

The National Woman’s Party (NWP), founded by Alice Paul, initiated the

concept of the Equal Rights Amendment in the early 1920s and continues

to support passage and ratification of it. For decades, the NWP was the

National Woman’s Party 489

only active advocate of the amendment and was regularly in conflict with

many women’s organizations, leaving it isolated from them. In addition,

the NWP membership was an elite group of women, and its leaders made

no attempt to become a mass membership organization.

The NWP has its roots in two organizations founded to further the

suffrage cause. The first, the Congressional Union, sought to obtain con-

gressional approval of a suffrage amendment. In 1916, Paul began orga-

nizing the second organization, the Woman’s Party, in states that had

granted women suffrage. Through the Woman’s Party, Paul hoped to elect

congressional candidates who would support the suffrage amendment.

After passage of the Nineteenth Amendment granting women suffrage,

the Woman’s Party and the Congressional Union dissolved, and the NWP

emerged in its place.

NWP viewed woman suffrage as the first step in women achieving

full equality, noting that the vote had not eliminated sex discrimination.

NWP conducted a survey of state laws and identified policies that dis-

criminated against women, including limits on women’s rights to their

earnings, to own property, to serve on juries, and to hold public office. In

addition, child custody and divorce laws favored men. Based upon its re-

search, the NWP announced its goal to gain complete equality for women.

In 1923, on the seventy-fifth anniversary of the Seneca Falls, New

York, women’s rights convention, the NWP approved the Lucretia Mott

Amendment, also known as the Equal Rights Amendment. The amend-

ment stated: “Men and women shall have equal rights throughout the

United States and every place subject to its jurisdiction.”

490 National Woman’s Party

Amelia Earhart

joined members of

the National

Woman’s Party in

support of the Equal

Rights Amendment,

1932 (Archive

Photos)

Social feminists and several women’s organizations, including the

National Women’s Trade Union League, the League of Women Voters, the

American Association of University Women, and the General Federation

of Women’s Clubs, opposed the amendment, fearing that it would make

protective labor laws for women unconstitutional. They proposed the al-

ternative of passing laws that removed the discriminatory policies, one law

at a time, one state at a time. The NWP acknowledged that the ERA would

likely outlaw protective labor legislation. In addition, some members be-

lieved that the protective legislation kept women out of higher-paying

jobs and generally reduced their opportunities. They rejected the alterna-

tive, saying that it would take too long. By insisting on the amendment,

NWP became alienated from other women’s organizations.

Through the efforts of the NWP, the ERA was introduced in the U.S.

Congress every session beginning in 1923. Occasionally, hearings were

held on it, but there was no substantial action on it. With the advent of

World War II, NWP launched a massive publicity campaign to pass the

ERA. It obtained endorsements for the ERA from celebrities, including

novelist Pearl Buck, artist Georgia O’Keeffe, and actresses Helen Hayes

and Katharine Hepburn, but the NWP remained unable to overcome la-

bor and women’s groups’ objections to the amendment. After World War

II, organizational turmoil and disputes diminished the group’s effective-

ness, and by the mid-1950s, its membership had declined from old age

and death.

Although the NWP was able to have the amendment introduced in

Congress, it was unable to move it beyond that initial step. In the 1960s,

as the modern feminist movement developed and the ERA gained the

support of the newly formed women’s political organizations, NWP par-

ticipated in congressional hearings. However, leadership in the ratification

campaign that followed congressional approval of the ERA came from the

National Organization for Women, the National Women’s Political Cau-

cus, and other groups.

See also American Association of University Women; Congressional Union;

Equal Rights Amendment; General Federation of Women’s Clubs; Juries,

Women on; League of Women Voters; National American Woman Suffrage

Association; National Organization for Women; National Women’s Political

Caucus; Nineteenth Amendment; Paul, Alice; Suffrage; Women’s Trade Union

League

References Cott, “Feminist Politics in the 1920s: The National Woman’s Party”

(1984); Freeman, “From Protection to Equal Opportunity: The Revolution in

Women’s Legal Status” (1990); Lemon, The Woman Citizen (1973).

National Woman’s Party 491

National Women’s Conference

Held in Houston, Texas, from 19 to 21 November 1977, the National

Women’s Conference (NWC) brought together thousands of U.S. women

delegates and observers to debate and approve the National Plan of Ac-

tion. The NWC was the brainchild of Congresswoman Bella Abzug (D-

NY), who successfully sponsored legislation authorizing the National

Commission on the Observance of International Women’s Year, 1975 to

call the conference and to provide federal funding for it.

Congress provided the commission with clear directions regarding

conference delegates, purposes, and processes. Public Law 94-167, which

mandated the conference, overtly stated feminist goals, including recogni-

tion of “the contributions of women to the development of our country”;

an assessment of “the progress that has been made to date by both the pri-

vate and public sectors in promoting equality between men and women in

all aspects of life in the United States”; an identification of “the barriers that

prevent women from participating fully and equally in all aspects of na-

tional life”; and development of “recommendations for means by which

such barriers can be removed.” The feminist predisposition of the commis-

sion becomes apparent from some of those appointed to it: commission

cochair Abzug, Ms. magazine editor Gloria Steinem, former congress-

woman Martha Griffiths (D-MI), California assemblywoman and later con-

gresswoman Maxine Waters (D-CA), National Organization for Women

president Eleanor Smeal, and other feminist leaders. Although the law also

called for racial, ethnic, age, and religious diversity and the purposeful in-

clusion of low-income women, it did not require political diversity.

Congress mandated state meetings in every state and the six territo-

ries (the District of Columbia, the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico, Guam,

American Samoa, the Virgin Islands, and the Trust Territory of the Pacific

Islands), and in compliance fifty-six state conferences were held before the

November NWC. At the state meetings, which were open to the public, at-

tendees debated the draft resolutions proposed by the commission and

proposed their own resolutions. Attendees also selected delegates to the

NWC, an open process that resulted in considerable consternation among

conference organizers when conservative groups such as the Eagle Forum,

the John Birch Society, the Ku Klux Klan, and the Mormon Church began

packing state meetings to elect sympathetic delegates. After Utah, Missis-

sippi, and other states elected conservative delegates, NWC organizers be-

gan to fear confrontations between feminists and conservatives and the

ultimate defeat of their agenda.

After states had chosen their delegations, 1,403 women had been se-

lected. In addition, 186 alternates, forty-seven commissioners, and 370

492 National Women’s Conference

delegates-at-large had official standing at the NWC. The status of dele-

gate-at-large had been created as a way for the commission to establish the

required diversity. The states, however, had successfully reached out to

groups that had historically been underrepresented, resulting in 64.5 per-

cent of the delegates being white, compared to 84.4 percent of the general

female population, leaving some of the delegate-at-large positions to be

filled by white, middle-class women.

The NWC opened on 19 November 1977, featuring the presentation

of a lighted torch that more than 2,000 women runners had relayed 2,610

miles from Seneca Falls, New York, the site of the first women’s rights con-

vention, to Houston. After First Lady Rosalynn Carter and former first

ladies Betty Ford and Lady Bird Johnson spoke to the convention, delib-

erations on the resolutions began. Using microphones placed throughout

the convention hall, delegates addressed the convention, supporting, at-

tempting to amend, and speaking against the proposed resolutions. The

confrontations between feminists and conservatives did not develop in

any significant way. Delegates held signs and wore buttons that an-

nounced their support of or opposition to issues such as abortion and the

Equal Rights Amendment.

The NWC approved twenty-six resolutions that became the National

Plan of Action. The resolutions called for the end of violence in the home,

prevention of child abuse and treatment for abused children, expanded

legislation recognizing the needs of disabled women, an increase in the

National Women’s Conference 493

Notable women

rallied for the Equal

Rights Amendment

at the National

Women’s Conference

in Houston (left to

right): Betty Friedan,

Elizabeth Carpenter,

First Lady Rosalynn

Carter, First Lady

Betty Ford, Esther

Peterson, Jill Ruck-

elshaus, and Repre-

sentative Bella Abzug

(D-NY), 1977

(Corbis/Bettmann)

number of women in elective and appointive public offices, ratification of

the Equal Rights Amendment, support for displaced homemaker pro-

grams, improved services for older women, and changes in criminal codes

to correct inequities against rape victims. Among the other topical areas

were arts and humanities, business, child care, credit, education, minority

women, offenders, rural women, and welfare and poverty.

NWC organizers had known that the two most controversial resolu-

tions were on reproductive freedom and sexual preference. As debate be-

gan on the reproductive freedom resolution, which included abortion

rights, supporters stepped to the microphones and made their points, but

there were only a few brief comments from the opposition to the resolu-

tion, despite the chair’s request that an opponent comment. Delegates ap-

proved the resolution.

The resolution to eliminate discrimination on the basis of sexual

preferences had not been among the recommendations drafted by the

commission, but thirty state meetings had approved the issue in their

agendas. The commission responded by adding a resolution barring dis-

crimination on the basis of sexual preferences for consideration by the

NWC. Both feminists and conservatives struggled with the resolution,

with one feminist calling it “an albatross” for the feminist agenda and say-

ing that it would make ratification of the Equal Rights Amendment more

difficult. Feminist Betty Friedan told the convention: “I am known to be

violently opposed to the lesbian issue” but added: “I believe we must help

the women who are lesbians” and supported the resolution. After the con-

ference approved the resolution, delegates from Mississippi turned their

backs to the podium, bent their heads as if praying, and held signs saying

“Keep Them in the Closet.”

The last resolution approved by the conference related to establish-

ing a committee of the conference with the responsibility to call another

NWC, as required by Public Law 94-167. In April 1978, President Jimmy

Carter established the National Advisory Committee for Women

(NACW), appointed forty people to it, and named Bella Abzug and Car-

men Delgado Votaw its cochairs. The NACW’s effectiveness was inter-

rupted by a dispute between Abzug and Carter, resulting in Carter’s dis-

missal of Abzug and several committee members’ resignations in protest.

Ultimately, a group of volunteers formed the National Women’s

Conference Committee, which coordinated efforts to implement the Na-

tional Plan of Action.

See also Abortion; Abzug, Bella Savitzky; Domestic Violence; Education,

Women and; Equal Rights Amendment; Friedan, Betty Naomi Goldstein;

Griffiths, Martha Edna Wright; Lesbian Rights; National Advisory Committee

for Women; National Commission on the Observance of International

494 National Women’s Conference

Women’s Year, 1975; National Women’s Conference Committee; Rape; Schlafly,

Phyllis Stewart; Smeal, Eleanor Cutri; Steinem, Gloria Marie; Waters, Maxine

Moore

References Bird, What Women Want (1979); East, American Women: 1963 1983

2003 (1983).

National Women’s Conference Committee

The National Women’s Conference Committee (NWCC) works through

existing organizations to implement the National Plan of Action approved

by the National Women’s Conference in 1977. Created in 1978 as the In-

ternational Women’s Year Continuing Committee, the NWCC is a private,

nonprofit corporation that is supported by paid memberships and a vol-

unteer corps.

The NWCC has its roots in the 1977 National Women’s Conference

held in Houston, Texas. The National Commission on the Observance of

International Women’s Year, 1975, which had planned and organized the

conference, dissolved in early 1978 as required by the law that had au-

thorized the conference. Among the resolutions in the National Plan of

Action was one for a continuing committee, which had also been a provi-

sion of the legislation authorizing the conference. Within a short time,

President Jimmy Carter had created the National Advisory Committee for

Women, but its work was abandoned after Carter and committee cochair

Abzug disagreed and Carter fired her, prompting several committee mem-

bers to resign. Carter appointed another committee, but it dissolved at the

end of his administration in 1980.

A group of women who had been involved in the National Women’s

Conference organized the NWCC to pursue the goals it had outlined.

NWCC has helped organize advocacy networks in thirty-four states, de-

veloped strategies for international networks of women, and convened

annual national meetings to assess progress on the National Plan of Ac-

tion. It has published materials on the Equal Rights Amendment and on

the National Plan of Action.

See also Abzug, Bella Savitzky; National Advisory Committee for Women; Na-

tional Commission on the Observance of International Women’s Year, 1975;

National Women’s Conference

References Bird, What Women Want (1979); East, American Women: 1963 1983

2003 (1983).

National Women’s Political Caucus

Founded in 1971, the National Women’s Political Caucus (NWPC) is a

national grassroots organization dedicated to increasing the number of

prochoice women in elected and appointed positions at every level of

National Women’s Political Caucus 495

government. Through its work, NWPC has helped raise women’s aware-

ness of themselves as a political interest group and has helped gain politi-

cians’ recognition of women as a constituency.

Feminist leader Betty Friedan conceived the idea of forming the

NWPC and founded the organization with some of modern feminism’s

most notable leaders, including Gloria Steinem, Fannie Lou Hamer, Olga

Madar, LaDonna Harris, Liz Carpenter, Dorothy Height, and Congress-

women Shirley Chisholm and Bella Abzug, among many others. They

shared a belief that a multipartisan women’s organization was needed to

promote the election and appointment of women to political offices.

At the time, the number of women serving in political leadership

roles and public office had not become an issue in the public conscious-

ness. There were no national campaign funds for women candidates and

only random efforts to obtain political appointments for women. In the

year NWPC was founded, less than 3 percent of the members of Congress

were women, and 4.5 percent of the members of state legislatures were

women. Caucus members believed that increasing the number of women

would enhance the potential for passage of the Equal Rights Amendment

and other feminist legislative priorities.

NWPC identifies, recruits, trains, and supports women seeking

elected and appointed office. In one campaign cycle in the 1990s, NWPC

trained more than 2,500 women, teaching them how to raise money, de-

velop a campaign message and strategy, motivate volunteers, and work

with the news media. It also endorses candidates and raises money for en-

dorsed candidates.

Increasing the numbers of women delegates to the Democratic Na-

tional Convention and the Republican National Convention was an early

priority for NWPC. In 1972, NWPC established training programs to as-

sist women interested in becoming delegates and to teach them the

process of becoming delegates. NWPC also sent representatives to both

parties’ conventions, meeting with women delegates, explaining NWPC’s

priorities, organizing networks, and providing support in the forms of in-

formation and strategy suggestions. The Republican Women’s Task Force

and the Democratic Women’s Task Force emerged from the 1972 efforts

and continued to work for feminist platform proposals at subsequent na-

tional conventions.

NWPC’s legislative priorities have included the Equal Rights Amend-

ment, abortion rights, child care, economic equity, welfare reform, fair

housing, and the Pregnancy Discrimination Act of 1978. NWPC organizes

and works with coalitions for the appointment of women to policymak-

ing positions.

See also Abzug, Bella Savitzky; Carpenter, Mary Elizabeth (Liz) Sutherland;

496 National Women’s Political Caucus

Chisholm, Shirley Anita St. Hill; Congress, Women in; Democratic Party,

Women in the; Equal Rights Amendment; Friedan, Betty Naomi Goldstein;

Hamer, Fannie Lou Townsend; Height, Dorothy Irene; Madar, Olga Marie;

Meissner, Doris Marie; Pregnancy Discrimination Act of 1978; Republican

Party, Women in the; State Legislatures, Women in; Steinem, Gloria Marie

References Feit, “Organizing for Political Power: The National Women’s Political

Caucus” (1979); www.feminist.com/nwpc.htm.

Natividad, Irene (b. 1948)

Irene Natividad was chair of the National Women’s Political Caucus from

1985 to 1989. Under Natividad’s leadership, the NWPC established the

Minority Women Candidates’ Training Program, analyzed factors affect-

ing success and defeat in women’s congressional races, and held training

workshops for political candidates and their staffs. In addition, Natividad

explained: “One of our missions [at the NWPC] is to transfer the political

experience we have developed on a national level to the state and local

level. We want to train women to run for local offices because if we don’t

feed that pipeline we won’t have winners.” Interested in helping women

obtain federal appointments, she met with President George Bush to dis-

cuss potential women appointees in his administration.

After the end of her second term as chair of NWPC in 1989, Nativi-

dad’s interests turned to international issues. She worked on the 1992

Global Forum of Women and the 1994 Taiwan Forum for Women.

Born in Manila, the Philippines, Irene Natividad moved with her

family to Okinawa, Japan, Iran, Greece, and India because of her father’s

work. Natividad graduated from high school in Greece. She earned her

bachelor’s degree in 1971 from Long Island University and a master’s de-

gree in American literature in 1973 and another master’s degree in phi-

losophy in 1976, both from Columbia University. She completed the

course requirements for a doctoral degree but has yet to complete her dis-

sertation for it.

Natividad became involved in politics during Eugene McCarthy’s

unsuccessful campaign for president in 1968. She held college faculty and

administrative positions from 1974 to 1985. Founder and president of

Asian American Professional Women in 1980, she also founded the Na-

tional Network of Asian-Pacific American Women and the Child Care Ac-

tion Campaign. From 1982 to 1984, Natividad chaired the New York state

Asian Pacific Caucus of the Democratic Party and was deputy vice chair

of the Asian Pacific Caucus of the Democratic National Committee. Dur-

ing Democratic vice presidential nominee Geraldine Ferraro’s 1984 cam-

paign, Natividad served as Asian American liaison for it.

See also National Women’s Political Caucus

Natividad, Irene 497

References New York Times, 18 November 1987; Zia and Gall, eds., Notable

Asian Americans (1995).

Neuberger, Maurine Brown (b. 1907)

Democrat Maurine Neuberger of Oregon served in the U.S. Senate from 9

November 1960 to 3 January 1967. Her political career began shortly after

she married Richard L. Neuberger in 1945. In 1948 Richard Neuberger

won a seat in the Oregon state Senate, and in 1950 Maurine Neuberger

won a seat in the Oregon House of Representatives. When the session be-

gan in 1951, Maurine and Richard Neuberger were the first married cou-

ple in the nation to serve simultaneously in both houses of a state legisla-

ture. They wrote Adventures in Politics: We Go to the Legislature (1954)

about their experiences, in addition to other published work.

While in the legislature, Maurine Neuberger cosponsored the bill that

created the Oregon Fair Employment Practices Act. She contributed to the

passage of bills that made it unlawful to discriminate in employment,

housing, public accommodations, and education based upon race, color,

national origin, religion, sex, marital status, handicap, or age. Maurine

Neuberger served in the Oregon House of Representatives through the

1955 session, when she decided to join her husband in Washington, D.C.

In 1954, Richard Neuberger had won election to the U.S. Senate.

In Washington, Neuberger became her husband’s political partner,

worked in his office, researched bills, wrote a monthly constituent newslet-

ter, and prepared a weekly radio program. When Richard Neuberger unex-

pectedly died on 9 March 1960, two days before the filing deadline for the

primary elections, Maurine Neuberger became a candidate to fill the vacancy

and to serve for the full term beginning in 1961. She won both contests.

As a member of the U.S. Senate, Maurine Neuberger supported the

regulation of billboards along federal highways, higher soybean price sup-

ports, reform of immigration laws to end national origins quota systems,

and stronger controls on cigarette advertising and warning labels on cig-

arette packages. She declined to run for a second full term. She later taught

at Boston University, Radcliffe Institute, and Reed College.

Born in Multnomah County, Oregon, Maurine Neuberger graduated

from high school in 1923 and two years later earned a teaching certificate

from Oregon College of Education. After teaching in public schools for a

few years, she returned to college and earned a bachelor’s degree in En-

glish and physical education from the University of Oregon. She later at-

tended graduate school at the University of California at Los Angeles.

See also Congress, Women in; State Legislatures, Women in

References H. W. Wilson, Current Biography Yearbook, 1961; Office of the Histo-

rian, U.S. House of Representatives, Women in Congress, 1917–1991 (1991).

498 Neuberger, Maurine Brown