Chaos in the Tribune

As the IWY events neared their conclusion, chaos erupted in the NGO tribune when participants learned that the group representing the United Women of the Tribune, led by Betty Friedan, had attempted to represent the tribune to the intergovernmental conference. The Mexican press attributed the campaign entirely to Friedan, describing the group she “commands” as composed primarily of US women who sought to subordinate the more political concerns that preoccupied Third World women to the “secondary issues” that interested US women. A planned lunchtime forum for the United Women turned into a fracas that generated one of IWY’s most widely circulated images: an AP photograph of two women fighting over a microphone.

The First Rule of Fight Club

Although the NGO tribune had been fashioned as the free-wheeling counterpart to the more protocol-bound intergovernmental conference, it did have one rule: no one was authorized to represent the tribune. However, by the conference’s mid-point, many tribune-goers, particularly those who had joined the Feminist Caucus, grew frustrated that they did not have a say in the government proceedings. The Feminist Caucus renamed itself United Women of the Tribune and sent a delegation led by Betty Friedan to submit proposed amendments to the IWY World Plan of Action. Other groups emerged to challenge the United Women’s authority to represent the tribune to the conference.

Follow the Money

This chapter considers the ways that the paltry funding available for IWY resulted in considerable influence by states and organizations that contributed to the UN voluntary fund for IWY activities. Due to time constraints, IWY planners established a consultative committee to plan the intergovernmental conference; Princess Ashraf Pahlavi, who had pledged $2 million to the voluntary fund, was named chair. While drafting the World Plan of Action, the consultative committee deliberated about how to prioritize issues related to women’s status, particularly between those who wanted to emphasize equality between men and women and those who sought economic development to improve standards of living across societies. Australian delegate Elizabeth Reid established a reputation for her facility in adjudicating these debates.

Getting to Mexico City

This chapter examines how the IWY conference, originally planned to take place in Bogota, Colombia, came to be held in Mexico City. It considers both Mexican president Luis Echeverría’s personal ambitions as a global leader as well as the burgeoning feminist movement within Mexico. The Mexican government agreed to host not only the intergovernmental conference but also a parallel NGO tribune, creating the conditions for a transformative aspect of the International Women’s Year. The last-minute relocation to Mexico City also resulted in the New York–based NGO leaders taking charge of the tribune, drawing heavily on their involvement with the 1974 UN Population Conference and the World YWCA.

WINGO Politics

This chapter examines the organizational and geopolitical rivalries that gave rise to IWY. It considers how long-simmering ideological tensions between the International Council of Women (ICW) and the Women’s International Democratic Federation (WIDF)—dubbed WINGOs (women’s international non-governmental organizations)—fostered competing visions for IWY. While the WIDF and its allies saw IWY as linking women’s issues with human rights, their Cold War rivals linked IWY humanitarian concerns and development strategies. Australia provides a case study of the growing rift in civil society between WINGOs and feminists and the tensions between those working within the rules of the game to those who wanted to change the game entirely. The chapter examines the Australian case to demonstrate the ways that IWY highlighted generational differences, particularly between younger women’s liberationists and older, more establishmentarian activists.

The Final Push

This chapter focuses on efforts at the IWY intergovernmental conference to finalize the World Plan of Action that made recommendations for programs and policies from the local level to the United Nations. Conflicts arose over what to include in the enumeration of obstacles to women’s emancipation. Although “sexism” had been ruled out during an earlier meeting, the plan’s introduction listed issues such as apartheid, neocolonialism, and, most controversially, Zionism. The Declaration of Mexico, which served as a preamble to the World Plan of Action, would become the first official UN document to liken Zionism to apartheid and other forms of state-sponsored racial discrimination. These discussions renewed debates about where or whether a line existed that divided “women’s issues” from “politics.”

Counter-congresses

This chapter focuses on the activities that took place during the final weekend before the IWY events closed. A committee at the intergovernmental conference considered—and rejected—a proposal to list sexism among the impediments to women’s equality, alongside terms such as foreign occupation, racial discrimination, and neocolonialism. The discussion reignited long-standing debates about equality and sexual difference. Meanwhile, conflicts broke out between supporters and opponents of the Pinochet government in Chile as nearly 1,000 demonstrators protested human rights abuses. Across town, a group of young women’s liberationists demonstrated in favor of abortion rights and public services to alleviate domestic labor burdens.

The Politics of Peace

This chapter focuses on the IWY theme of “peace,” a catch-all term used for issues that the United States delegation preferred to keep off the agenda, such as nuclear disarmament, apartheid, racial discrimination, and national sovereignty. The charismatic Soviet Valentina Tereshkova attracted particular attention because of her celebrity as the first female cosmonaut. Discussions of peace fostered debates over whether women were naturally more pacifist than men as well as the importance of women’s roles in armed national liberation movements. Reporters and participants particularly followed the First Ladies Leah Rabin of Israel and Jehan Sadat of Egypt to see if they would greet each other in an effort to restore peace in the region.

¡Domitila a la Tribuna!

After Friday’s chaotic session, the United Women of the Tribune were determined to show that women could come together behind a core set of concerns, countering all the media representations of women fighting over microphones and exchanging barbs in press conferences. In an effort to counter the media image of women engaged in a “global catfight,” IWY tribune organizers staged a “unity panel” to showcase broad agreement on a range of issues. The plan backfired when Bolivian labor activist Domitila Barrios de Chungara confronted the panel chair, Mexican feminist Esperanza Brito de Martí, to insist that calls for unity were simply another form of imperialism.

“Other Kinds of Problems”

This chapter opens with the arrival of Domitila Barrios de Chungara, a Bolivian labor activist who emerged as the standard-bearer for Third World women frustrated by US feminists’ efforts to define the IWY agenda. Although organizers of both the intergovernmental conference and the NGO tribune had hoped to put “politics” aside in order to focus on “women’s issues,” Barrios de Chungara articulated powerful reminders that the two remained inextricably intertwined. Tribune discussions returned to the question of how women’s domestic labor burdens limited women’s opportunities, although discussions frequently turned to condemnations of Augusto Pinochet’s government in Chile. Those stressing Third World concerns, whether about human rights or about subsistence labor, argued that the issues highlighted by US feminists, particularly around reproductive rights and sexual liberation, distracted from more compelling concerns.