A Woman Who Was There: Cindy Phillips on the 1977 National Women’s Conference

HPR: What was it like being at the conference?

Cindy: Oh it was exciting! It was very exciting to be in a place that was so full of powerful women, because that was a time when there weren’t a lot of women role models. So, to be in a huge convention auditorium filled with really competent exciting women was pretty amazing.

And how did you get involved?

I was the chair of the ND delegation and I’d been involved with NOW (National Organization for Women) and some other feminist activities and then there was a state women’s conference and the way that the delegates were chosen for the national women’s conference was by state meetings.
You were one of how many delegates from North Dakota?

Well let’s see, I’ll count the names [Cindy has a poster with several autographs from women who also attended the conference]. I’m guessing there were 14 official delegates from North Dakota.
And do you still stay in contact with any of those ladies at all?

A few of them yes, a few of them have died and a few have gone off to other places, which I suppose is what dying is too, depending on your beliefs on that.
Were you disappointed with the result of the convention?

I think any conference like that is far more about empowering the people who are attending than it is really about anything else, and I think it was a wonderful event for that.

I think some national leaders in various areas emerged and I think connections that were built there had a long ongoing impact. I mean it was nice to have the resolutions, but I don’t think anybody expected to have the world immediately jump and enact the resolutions that were passed into law. I mean we all hoped, but that’s different from thinking we’ve written enough that Congress will pass it next year.
I was at the White House at the official presentation of the report to the president and the best part of that was reconnecting with some of the people. Then I was on a continuing committee for a while so I think that it also contributed to a lot of community building in the states, and in a number of the states it really brought out the abortion and Equal Rights Amendment battle (ERA).
A number of the states had some real differences of opinion and groups brought in. I don’t know that it was exactly the health care debate that the congress people are seeing in their home districts that we’re hearing about in the news. It wasn’t that uncivil, but some of the states really did have some pretty strongly hotly contested elections and state conferences.

Ours in North Dakota was civil but there were still folks with very differing opinions. But the majority, and therefore the folks elected, were pretty strong feminist leaders although they weren’t all pro-choice. I think they were all pro ERA.
Was there any disappointment with the ERA not being passed?
Oh of course! Of Course, how can you not be disappointed that so basic a statement was not enacted? I think that it was subject to a lot of the kinds of scare tactics that we hear today about a lot of other issues like that. We’re hearing scare tactics about the health care debate, scare tactics about gay marriage debates, irrational, emotional based arguments and we heard a lot of that with the ERA.
The (ERA) Amendment was about law and government policy, the law wasn’t about what you feel or what I feel or anybody feels, the law was about whether or not we would stand for inequality being preserved in the law. What the (ERA) Amendment says is equality of rights under the law shall not be denied on account of sex. So what it is is a statement of whether or not the legal system and the government can constitutionally engage in practices that differentiate on the basis of sex. And for us as a nation not to agree to that is a pretty amazing thing.
Do you think that we’ve made headway towards those principles without the ERA?
Oh, sure there’s lots of progress that has been made!
Do you think that anything good would come of having another conference like the one in 1977?
I don’t know and my hesitancy around a conference like that is based in the notion that people can get together and agree or disagree, but still continue to function, adopt resolutions by a majority vote, etc. There seems to me to have been such a change in our culture where we seem not to be willing to engage in a debate that allows the other side to be heard and a decision to be made and we just shout at one another.

When you think of the kinds of highly polarizing radio talk shows when you think of the kind of behavior that is being encouraged at these meetings with the members of congress in their districts, you know people just want to stand up and shout and disrupt the meeting rather than allow it to continue.

And the premise of the National Women’s Conference was that women, and it wasn’t just women, there were men, but predominantly women would come together and talk about women’s issues and make recommendations and I’m sure it could still happen in a way that could energize lots of people, but it would be subject to disruption and I don’t think that’s good.

Cindy Phillips, former North Dakota delegate to the 1977 National Women’s Conference currently lives in Fargo and works as a professor at MSUM.

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