Public Women, Public Words by Dawn Keetley

Author:Dawn Keetley
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781461641537
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers

64

NATIONAL COMMISSION ON THE OBSERVANCE OF INTERNATIONAL WOMEN’S YEAR

Declaration of American Women (1977)

We are here to move history forward.

We are women from every State and Territory in the Nation

We are women of different ages, beliefs, and life-styles.

We are women of many economic, social, political, racial, ethnic, cultural, educational, and religious backgrounds.

We are married, single, widowed, and divorced.

We are mothers and daughters.

We are sisters.

We speak in varied accents and languages but we share the common language and experience of American women who throughout our Nation’s life have been denied the opportunities, rights, privileges, and responsibilities accorded to men.

For the first time in more than 200 years of our democracy, we are gathered in a National Women’s Conference, charged under Federal law to assess the status of women in our country, to measure the progress we have made, to identify the barriers that prevent us from participating fully and equally in all aspects of national life, and to make recommendations to the President and to the Congress for means by which such barriers can be removed.

We recognize the positive changes that have occurred in the lives of women since the founding of our nation. In more than a century of struggle from Seneca Falls 1848 to Houston 1977, we have progressed from being nonpersons and slaves whose work and achievements were unrecognized, whose needs were ignored, and whose rights were suppressed to being citizens with freedoms and aspirations of which our ancestors could only dream.

We can vote and own property. We work in the home, in our communities and in every occupation. We are 40 percent of the labor force. We are in the arts, sciences, professions, and politics. We raise children, govern States, head businesses and institutions, climb mountains, explore the ocean depths, and reach toward the moon.

Our lives no longer end with the childbearing years. Our lifespan has increased to more than 75 years. We have become a majority of the population, 51.3 percent, and by the 21st Century, we shall be an even larger majority.

But despite some gains made in the past 200 years, our dream of equality is still withheld from us and millions of women still face a daily reality of discrimination, limited opportunities, and economic hardship.

Man-made barriers, laws, social customs, and prejudices continue to keep a majority of women in an inferior position without full control of our lives and bodies.

From infancy throughout life, in personal and public relationships, in the family, in the schools, in every occupation and profession, too often we find our individuality, our capabilities, our earning powers diminished by discriminatory practices and outmoded ideas of what a woman is, what a woman can do, and what a woman must be.

Increasingly, we are victims of crimes of violence in a culture that degrades us as sex objects and promotes pornography for profit.

We are poorer than men. And those of us who are minority women—blacks, Hispanic Americans, Native Americans, and Asian Americans—must overcome the double burden of discrimination based on race and sex.

We lack effective political and economic power.

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