User:Dudewheresmycow/sandbox

"Heated debates ensued over 26 major topics addressed at the Conference, such as the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA), reproductive rights, child care funding, sexual orientation, and the rights of disabled, minority and aging women.^[8]"

Organizing Around Identities

Concerning the aforementioned rights of the disabled, minority and aging women, the National Plan of Action included separate sections devoted specifically to several such groups of women based on identity. These separate planks were intended to create a space in which women who fit distinctions such as 'Minority Women' 'Rural Women' and 'Older Women' could address concerns uniquely related to these identities.

Hundreds of women sought to have their voices heard and to be included in the document. Maxine Waters, a woman of color, worked ceaselessly to pass the 'Minority Women' resolution. Waters described the moment of its passing: "Everyone joined in singing 'We Shall Overcome' and women were crying and hugging each other. It was an especially big moment for me because I led off the reading of the resolution we had spent three days and nights drafting." Waters also explained the importance of including minority women's perspectives in all of the planks, ensuring that they did not simply become isolated within the 'Minority Women' section. She wrote: "There is a black perspective in all the feminist issues in the National Plan. Battered women, for example. There's a special black perspective because of the frustration of men in the black community. Black women have been able to get jobs when black men could not, and are often hired under affirmative action plans because they meet two criteria: 1) as women, and 2) as blacks. The frustration of the men in seeking employment added to other sexist socialization, often leads to wife-beating. When I was growing up, I often saw women beaten in the streets."

The diverse nature of the women who attended the Conference contributed to many debates between individuals and between various groups of women. Women had to organize and debate across identity in order to reach solutions. In Sisters of '77, Jane Hickie commented: "I don't believe that Anglo women had heard directly... those sorts of frustrations from other women who were Mexican American or Puerto Rican American [or] Latinas ever before.” Maxine Waters elaborated on her experience with this: "I try to explain to white women the reasons why black women can't support some of the feminist issues. For example, in California, we have a midwifery bill. Midwives were very common in the history of the black community. Because they were too poor to go to the hospital, black women's babies were delivered at home by midwives. The new mothers suffered torn tissues... the scar tissue is still there... Black women just don't understand white women who say they don't want to go to sterile hospitals to deliver their babies." These differences emphasized the importance of injecting multiple perspectives into every plank. As stated in the beginning of the 'Minority Women' plank: "Every recommendation of this National Plan of Action shall be understood as applying equally and fully to minority women."

Kimberle Crenshaw explains the necessity of intersectional approaches to address women's issues: “Where systems of race, gender, and class domination converge, as they do in the experiences of battered women of color, intervention strategies based solely on the experiences of women who do not share the same class or race backgrounds will be of limited help to women who because of race and class face different obstacles.”