National Commission on the Observance of International Women's Year

The Commission's membership was originally composed of 35 private citizens appointed by the President. This number was expanded to 45 by executive order from President Carter.[5]

While the Carter presidency did originally consider reappointed a larger number of members from the Ford administration,[6] only a handful did so: Elizabeth Athanasakos, the outgoing presiding officer; Audrey Rowe Colom, chairperson of the National Women's Political Caucus; Martha Griffiths, the first woman elected to Congress from Michigan; Lenore Hershey, editor of Ladies' Home Journal; Ersa Poston, a civil servant from New York; and Gerridee Wheeler, Republican political official from North Dakota. The ex officio congressional members were all retained, with the exception of Bella Abzug, who lost her election to be a Senator for New York, who became the new presiding officer and was replaced by fellow New York Democratic congresswoman Elizabeth Holtzman.

The first Presiding Officer was Jill Ruckelshaus until June 1976, after which it was Elizabeth Athanasakos.[7] The Commission also included four Members of Congress, two Senators and two Representatives in its membership. Those members were: Senator Birch Bayh (D), Senator Charles H. Percy (R), Representative Bella Abzug (D), and Representative Margaret Heckler (R). Other members during the Ford presidency (1975-8)[8] were:

During the Carter presidency, the Presiding Officer was Bella Abzug, a former ex officio member as a US Representative. Other members included:

The membership of the Carter years of the Commission was notable for its diversity and its inclusion of minority groups. Prominent African American poet Maya Angelou and civil rights leader Coretta Scott King were added as members, as was Jean O'Leary, as a representative voice from the National Gay Task Force. This carried notable consequences for the commission's work, including the proposition of a plank around lesbian rights in the National Plan of Action, one of the most controversial sections and one of the highest level debates for LGBT rights at its time.

President Gerald Ford (center right) and First Lady Betty Ford with members of the US delegation to the World Conference on Women, 1975, two weeks after the conference.

The activities of the commission changed over time, in line with the political interests of the presidents at the time. In both presidencies, the adoption of the Equal Rights Amendment was a prominent theme, with its ratification debate lasting throughout the duration of the Commission's existence.

World Conference on Women, 1975

The United Nations' activities around International Women's Year focused on the World Conference on Women, 1975, held in Mexico City. The United States participated in the conference, sending three representatives: Patricia Hutar, delegation head and U.S. Representative to the U.N. Commission on the Status of Women; Jewel LaFontant, former Deputy Solicitor General of the Department of Justice and U.S. Representative of the Conference; and Jill Ruckelshaus.[10] The conference culminated in a World Plan of Action, which the United States voted against due to its inclusion of anti-Zionist language.[11]

Cover the Commission's 1976 report

While the United States did not sign the World Plan of Action, the Commission published a report to the United States President, entitled "To Form a More Perfect Union...": Justice for American Women. The report focuses on a number of issues, including gendered divisions of domestic labor, the Equal Rights Amendment, the under-representation of women in public life, and child care. The report is notable for its endorsement of the Supreme Court's decision in Roe v. Wade and asked the government to continue to remove other barriers "to permit women greater choice with regard to their reproductive lives."[12]

Cover of the Spirit of Houston, the official report that represented the commission's final output.