WATCH(Women Act to Control Healthcare), formed in 1972 to try to save the Chicago Maternity Center, a home birthing clinic located on Chicago's Westside. WATCH also did pregnancy testing for women in a storefront on Halsted Street and assisted women in making choices about their pregnancy including where to get a safe abortion.
by the CWLU Herstory Editorial Committee
In 1972, the Chicago Maternity Center, which had served pregnant women on the impoverished West Side of Chicago since 1895, was under attack. At that time the Maternity Center was the only at-home delivery service available to urban women in the USA and the medical establishment was determined to close it.
Puzzled West Siders wondered why, as the clinic had a long history of excellent patient care. When it was founded, it was one of the first clinics to recognize the importance of antiseptic surroundings for a birthing mother. Later under the direction of Dr. Beatrice Tucker, it was delivering 1200 babies a year in women's homes. The ethnic composition of the West Side changed over the years, but the Chicago Maternity Center never wavered in its commitment to serve the poor. The Center depended upon local hospitals and medical schools to obtain medical students and doctors to assist in its work.
Fearing competition with its planned Prentiss Womens' Hospital, Northwestern University moved to close the Center. There was also a deep seated prejudice against home birthing, partly because it did not rely on profitable hospitalizations and expensive high tech equipment. The Center believed that hospitalization and high tech intervention were only necessary in unusual emergency situations.
When the Women's Union heard about the danger to the Maternity Center's existence, concerned CWLU members organized WATCH and tried to build support for the Center's continued existence. They held demonstrations and meetings and organized negotiations to try to save the Center.
Meanwhile CWLUers Sue Davenport and Jenny Rohrer approached Kartemquin Films (best known today for the award winning Hoop Dreams), and suggested that Kartemquin help them do a film on the struggle to save the Maternity Center. The resulting documentary, The Chicago Maternity Center, still remains a classic of radical documentary film making. You may purchase a copy of the video by visiting our Feminist Marketplace.WATCH did succeed in delaying the closing of the Chicago Maternity Center, but ultimately financial and political clout prevailed and the Center was forced to close its doors.
Prison Project
Prison Project worked with women incarcerated at the Dwight Correctional Center. They taught learning skills, helped prisoners with legal research and organized advocacy on the outside. Eventually, their work at the prison helped establish child visitation rights for incarcerated mothers.
by Chicago Herstory Website Editorial Committee
Prison Project went to Dwight Prison in central Illinois every Saturday for five years to teach classes and work to improve prison conditions. When Prison Project began its work, there had been strikes and revolts at a number of America's prisons, often leading to death and injury. These revolts were met by a combination of savage repression and grudging reform. Most of these revolts had taken place at men's facilities and change was slow to come to women's prisons.
When Prison Project first came to Dwight the women prisoners had only a Beauty School as their job training. Educational programs were limited. Healthcare was poor, with women getting very little information about their physical condition, about the treatments they were receiving or about the medication that was prescribed to them. There was no gynecologist available except in cases of extreme emergency.
Incarcerated mothers were not permitted to visit with their children, which caused great personal and family hardship. The state agencies responsible for the children of incarcerated mothers did not provide decent care and often provided little information to the mothers.
Racism was a serious problem at the prison. Most inmates were Black or Latin and the staff tended to treat the white inmates marginally better. There were no programs for racial and cultural minorities.
To deal with the brutal conditions at Dwight, Prison Project taught classes in health and law. The Project also organized the Dwight Task Force to link up reform minded politicians, community groups and revolutionary organizations to do prison advocacy work.
As a result of their efforts, the Illinois Department of Children and Family Services and the Illinois Department of Corrections finally created a space for women within the institution that included a nursery room which was much more conducive to interaction between the women and their children.
Prison Project's work in defending the rights of prisoners inevitably came into conflict with the Dwight administration and the group was eventually banned from the prison.
Pregnancy Testing
Back when pregnancy tests were only available from clinics and doctors, the Pregnancy Testing workgroup provided a very popular service to women who could not afford a doctor or clinic, or were turned off by the pervasive medical sexism of the time. by Elaine Wessel
In the early 1970's, it was not possible for women to buy their own pregnancy testing kits at drugstores; that only became possible a few years later. The only places that women could get pregnancy tests were at doctor's offices and health clinics, where many women were reluctant to go. Women who were considering abortion (illegal throughout most of the United States), unmarried women, very young women, and women who could not afford doctor's fees were among the women who found CWLU's Pregnancy Testing a very useful service.
Women's health concerns, in a variety of forms, were among the major issues that CWLU dealt with throughout its' existence. In the spring of 1970, when CWLU was only a few months old, the organization decided to work on the creation of a women's health clinic as a city-wide project. This clinic, eventually given the name of Alice Hamilton Women's Health Center, never actually came about, but out of the plans for the clinic, Pregnancy Testing got started, and existed in one form or another throughout the history of CWLU.
The plans for the clinic assumed that it would be in one location, and that a number of committees would be needed to make the clinic function. One such committee was called Medical Technology, which set to work in deciding which medical tests would be offered at the clinic, and training people to do those tests. Pregnancy testing (done with urine samples brought in by the women) was one such test, and it turned out to be easy to learn and easy to perform even in settings that were not fully-equipped clinics.
Because members of the Medical Technology Committee were ready to do pregnancy tests even before the clinic opened, they decided to go ahead with pregnancy testing at several different locations. The original plans would have been to consolidate pregnancy testing in the clinic when it opened, but since the full clinic never opened, pregnancy testing continued to be done at several locations around Chicago during the course of CWLU's existence.
The first two locations were at a YWCA on the southwest side, in the neighborhood where the planned Alice Hamilton clinic would have been, and at La Dolores Women's Center on the north side. Both of these locations were in service in 1970-71; in both locations, the pregnancy testing project had to leave when the hosting location closed down. When CWLU opened up an office on the north side in 1972, pregnancy testing began at that location, and continued through several different locations of the office: on Belmont near Clark, 1972-74; Lincoln near Diversey, 1974-76; and Diversey and Milwaukee, 1976-77. In addition, a new south side location opened up in 1970's, at a church in Hyde Park.
The pregnancy test was a chemical test which looked for the presence of HCG (human chorionic gonadotropin hormone) in a woman's urine. If a woman was pregnant, HCG would be present in her urine and she would test positive. The test was "non-invasive" in the sense that the people doing the test did not have to examine the women or draw blood. The facilities needed for the tests included the test kits themselves (purchased in bulk from a medical supply house), a bathroom with a toilet and sink, a refrigerator, and a sturdy work table with good light.
Most of these facilities were already available in the various rented or borrowed locations where pregnancy testing was done, which is one of the reasons why pregnancy testing was easier to set up than some other medical tests. The chemical tests were fairly easy to learn, even for people without much background in the biological sciences, and succeeded in demystifying medicine (at least for the women who were active in the pregnancy testing project).
Elaine Wessel is active in the CWLU Herstory Website Committee and was a member of the Pregnancy Testing workgroup. Her photographs of CWLU activities may be seen throughout our site and in our Gallery section. She is presently working as an audio-visual specialist in the education field.
Legal Clinic
The Legal Clinic provided a much needed alternative for women at a time when there were few women lawyers and even fewer women judges. The Clinic gave free legal advice and referred people to women lawyers who charged reasonable fees or did work pro bono.
by the CWLU Herstory Website Editorial Committee
The CWLU's Legal Clinic was organized in 1971, when there were few women lawyers and the entire judicial system was permeated by the kind of blatantly open gender discrimination that is much less common today. Staffed by women lawyers and law students, the Clinic was open one night a week in the evening.
Many of the cases that the Legal Clinic handled involved divorce, child support and domestic violence. The Clinic also dealt with criminal and creditor cases.
For women facing divorce, the Legal Clinic did more than just explain the divorce laws. The Clinic helped women see that the non-legal issues were just as important: learning how to do tasks formerly handed by their husbands, going back to work while dealing with childcare and coping with friends who still saw the woman as part of a "couple".
The Clinic also provided help for women who wanted to use the courts to enforce the Equal Pay Act of 1963 and the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Getting the government to enforce these laws is frustrating and time consuming and can lead to retaliation by discriminatory employers. The Legal Clinic made sure that women understood the obstacles they would have to overcome to win.
A large number of women came to the Clinic to complain about lawyers whom they had hired and paid, but who were doing nothing to advance their cases. The Clinic attempted to help, but made it clear that prevention was the best strategy. They counseled women to get financial details from their attorneys clearly laid out from the beginning, to insist on proper payment receipts and to have access to all divorce complaints and settlement papers.
The Legal Clinic also referred people to trusted women lawyers who worked for reasonable rates or even for free.
HERS (Health Evaluation and Referral Service)
HERS(Health Evaluation and Referral Service) provided women with detailed information about health resources in the Chicagoland area. One of the CWLU's most successful projects, it lasted until 1990.
by Amy Laiken
THE EARLY YEARS
Healthcare was always a major focus of CWLU organizing. In the wake of the 1973 Roe v. Wade decision legalizing abortion, largely unmonitored abortion clinics began to proliferate. As a response, the Health Evaluation and Referral Service (HERS) was founded in 1973 by two women who were students in the Urban Preceptorship Program, a course that dealt with the delivery of health care and social services in Chicago.
Believing that there was an unmet need for information on safe, reliable clinics, they visited several Chicago area clinics as their project for the Program. During these onsite inspections they inquired about fees, anesthesia, number of procedures performed per week, availability of counseling and aftercare, and other pertinent details.
As they needed a way to make their findings available, they decided that the Chicago Womens Liberation Union (CWLU) would be an appropriate place to house and disseminate the information, since one of the women was already a member. A second phone line (with what was likely one of the earliest answering machines in Chicago) was installed at the CWLU office.
Initially there was an idea to call the group Health Information Service(HIS), but, given the nature of the work, the acronym was thought to be inappropriate. It was finally named HERS. The number of volunteers expanded as women from the Abortion Task Force and others interested in women's health joined. Shortly after women began calling for information, HERS members designed a feedback form to send to those callers who agreed to complete and return it following their visits to a clinic. The volunteers answering calls were then able to share the reactions of many women who had actually used the clinics, as well as information obtained from the on-site visits.
In the early years the clinic visits were carried out largely, although not exclusively, by lay people. HERS volunteers found that although several clinics provided safe, compassionate care, some facilities clearly did not. Acting on their suspicions, three HERS volunteers who only the day before were certified as non-pregnant by a local gynecological clinic, visited an abortion clinic posing as patients and were told by clinic staff that their pregnancy tests were positive. They then took their findings to the press and to court, and the clinic was subsequently closed. Some callers began asking HERS phone volunteers for referrals to private physicians. As a response, the group began collecting information about individual physicians. That began with doctors recommended by friends of HERS and other CWLU members.
As it was not feasible to do personal visits to the doctors, much of the information about their practices was obtained through telephone interviews. A physician feedback form was designed and mailed to those callers who expressed a willingness to complete it following their appointments. Several HERS volunteers were psychotherapists in private practice, and started a feminist therapist referral list. Candidates were placed on the list only after having been personally interviewed by the HERS psychotherapists.
THE LATER YEARS
During the years that HERS was part of the CWLU there were periodic discussions about whether providing services could influence providers and health care policy, and if so, to what extent. There were other discussions about how or if some of the CWLU's theoretical debates related to HERS work. Some of those discussions took a back seat when we had to decide the fate of HERS when the CWLU disbanded in 1977.
HERS members still believed that there was an ongoing need for accurate information and consumer feedback about health issues and health care providers. In order to obtain funding as a separate entity, we formed a board, incorporated, and secured tax exempt status from the IRS, enabling us to apply for grants.
In the late 70's, HERS was awarded a two-year contract from the Illinois Family Planning Council to operate Private Line, a service that provided health information and referrals to teens. The group applied for and received grants from several foundations. This money enabled HERS to hire paid staff. When it was possible to rely on staff to answer calls, board members and other volunteers were then able to use their time to work on such projects as the HERS Healthy Kit. Written by HERS members in 1977, the Kit was a packet of information on several issues such as childbirth, abortion, nutrition, and environmental health. By that time, HERS had achieved a track record of providing reputable counseling and referrals.
During a Chicago Sun-Times/ Better Government Association expose of abortion clinics published in 1978, HERS was listed in the newspaper as a reliable source for abortion counseling. By 1981 HERS had served over 20,000 callers and had sold over 3,000 copies of the Healthy Kit. During that period we realized that to maintain credibility, the bi-annual abortion clinic evaluations had to be done by medical professionals. Sharon Lieberman, the coordinator of the evaluation project, writes: "HERS and Planned Parenthood/Chicago Area (PP/CA) negotiated a cooperative activity of clinic evaluation to be conducted on a bi-annual basis. The two groups came to a written agreement on the minimum medical and counseling standards for an approved provider."
The original HERS consumer-lead, feminist focused visits became professionalized. The first cooperative evaluation commenced in 1981, with two representatives of HERS and two from PP/CA visiting clinics to which they were invited. PP/CA provided a physician, experienced in abortion procedures, who evaluated actual terminations. The major aspects of abortion provision counseling, surgical procedure, aftercare, and clinic administration were observed directly by each evaluation team member with an interest and/or credentials in that service. Fact-finding reports from the teams were evaluated separately by each organization (HERS and PP/CA), with each developing its own list, although most approved referral lists were similar. The combined effort, from inception to referral list, took about two years. The evaluation cycles continued through the 1980's, but Planned Parenthood no longer participated after 1984. During the 1989-90 evaluation cycle, HERS suffered financial problems and disbanded in late 1990.
HERS was one of the few work groups of the Chicago Women's Liberation Union to survive the umbrella organization. It was able to do that largely because it provided education and services, and was therefore qualified for tax exempt status that enabled the group to apply for and receive grants. HERS was instrumental in raising the standard of care at area abortion clinics and other facilities by advocating for patients rights.
There were some areas in which HERS was less successful. While over the years the group served a large number of women, it might have done a better job at trying to reach under- served communities, both in terms of service and involvement in decision-making. In retrospect, HERS spent a tremendous amount of time on fund raising, but it is unclear if that could have been handled differently. However, among its successes, HERS left a legacy in the Chicago Abortion Fund, founded in 1985, in part, by former HERS members. In addition, what had been known as the HERS clinic evaluation project continued through the 1995-97 cycle, sponsored by the Chicago Abortion Fund, and finally the Illinois Pro-Choice Alliance.
Amy Laiken is active in the CWLU Herstory Website Committee and is a former HERS member. She recently retired from a career in the social services field.
DARE/Direct Action for Rights in Employment
DARE worked in Chicago's labor movement, trying to battle the intense employment discrimination of the time. Their most successful activity was the campaign to support the City Hall janitresses who courageously confronted the Major Richard J. Daley political machine over racial and gender discrimination.
by the CWLU Herstory Editorial Committee
(We have photos of DARE activities in our Gallery Section)
Grassroots working class organizing was an important part of the CWLU's work. As socialist-feminists, the CWLU believed that a progressive working class political movement was essential to transforming American society. Focusing their efforts on working class women, DARE sought to organize women at workplaces across the city.
DARE's most successful activity was its steadfast support of the Chicago City Hall janitresses. These women, who cleaned up after Chicago's most prominent politicians, made less than men for harder work. Subjected to demeaning racial and gender discrimination, they were denied fair advancement opportunities.
Led by a janitress named Susan Bates, the janitresses worked with DARE and the CWLU to publicize their situation and bring suit under the Fair Employment Practices Act. Allying with the City Hall janitresses brought the CWLU into direct confrontation with the powerful Mayor Richard J. Daley political machine. After a long and difficult struggle, the City Hall janitresses won the campaign.
DARE also published a newspaper called Secret Storm( not to be confused with a newspaper of the same name published by the Outreach Committee) which publicized struggles at Stewart-Warner, Campbell's Soup, and other Chicago workplaces. Stewart-Warner was a large auto parts plant on Chicago's Northside, which had a core of union activists who were challenging both the company owners and the conservative leadership of their union. Like many plants of that time, there was widespread gender and racial discrimination in pay and promotions. At Campbell's Soup, women workers fought for plant-wide seniority and an end to dual seniority lists, both of which were clearly gender discriminatory.
DARE members were also present at the founding convention of the Coalition of Labor Union Women(CLUW) and were active in its local Chicago chapter. CLUW attempted to unite trade union women, a difficult task because of deep divisions in the AFL-CIO between union bureaucrats and rank & file as well as the divisions among unions.
Reflecting upon their experience in DARE, former members recall the intense effort put into the group as well as the immensity of the tasks that they took on. Working class organizing is often a slow frustrating process of small victories and many heartbreaking defeats. DARE was no exception.
Chicago Women's Graphics Collective
The colorful posters of the Chicago Women's Graphics Collective adorned the walls of many feminist homes, offices. women's centers and health clinics in the 1970's and 1980's. They are considered collector's items today
by Estelle Carol
The Chicago Women's Graphics Collective was first organized in 1970 to provide high quality feminist posters for the growing women's liberation movement. The Collective originally used silkscreen to create their large brilliantly colored prints because it was inexpensive and in the early days, posters could actually be produced in members' apartments.
As their distribution grew, the Collective moved to a series of studios and began using offset printing for their most popular posters. Graphics Collective posters reflected the broad diversity of the women's movement. The Collective produced posters on abortion, women's health, lesbianism, women's labor, sisterhood, women's sports,women's spirituality, rape and other clearly feminist issues, but also created posters on the United Farmworkers struggle, African liberation, anti-war themes and highly personal visions that defy easy categorization.
Graphics Collective posters appeared in peoples' homes, women's liberation offices, coffee shops, women's centers, women's health clinics, labor unions, and even on the set of a popular TV sitcom. All work was done in teams of 2-4 women led by an artist-designer. The Collective wanted a new feminist art that transcended the highly individualistic "Great Men of Art" syndrome. Members would propose a poster idea and then recruit a team to actually produce it. This method incorporated the vision of the individual artist into the collective art process.
Thousands of posters were distributed worldwide during the Collective's 13 year history from 1970-1983. Today some of their best efforts are considered classics of feminist poster art.
See also: Chicago Women's Graphics Collective in the Gallery section for more information.
Estelle Carol was a founder of the Chicago Women's Graphics Collective and is the coordinator of the CWLU Herstory Project. She currently owns a graphic design and illustration business. She invites you to visit her labor cartoon website at www.cartoonwork.com which she maintains with her partner Bob Simpson.
Chicago Women's Liberation Rock Band
They were probably the first feminist rock and roll ensemble in U.S. history. Their live performances are remembered with great affection by those who attended them. With their sister band, the New Haven Women's Liberation Rock Band, they cut a vinyl LP called Mountain Moving Day in 1972. by the CWLU Herstory Website Editorial Committee
The Chicago Women's Liberation Rock Band played feminist music for an all too brief time from 1970-73. People who recall their live performances speak of the incredible energy unleashed by the band. With their sister band, the New Haven Women's Liberation Rock Band, they released a vinyl LP called Mountain Moving Day in 1972.
According to Naomi Weisstein, who played keyboards with the group, she first conceived of the idea of a women's rock band when she tired of hearing pop music glorify the subjugation and degradation of women. As a founder of the Chicago Women's Liberation Union, Weisstein wanted to reach out to young women and at the same time, educate the CWLU membership about the importance of feminist culture.
The Band's first public performance in Grant Park consisted of 12 singers and 4 guitarists and was generally regarded as a musical disaster. The band's utopian belief that any woman could play music proved to be illusionary. Eventually the line up solidified as Susan Abod (bass, vocals), Sherry Jenkins (guitar, vocals), Patricia Miller (guitar, vocals), Linda Mitchell (manager), Fania Mantalvo (drums), Suzanne Prescott (drums). and Naomi Weisstein (keyboards).
Band members tried to turn the star culture of rock music inside out. They actually tried to start musical performances on time. They rapped with their audiences, asked them what songs they liked and turned their amplifiers down to a reasonable human level. They combined guerilla theater with music as Susan Abod describes:
"We did the Kinks 'You Really Got Me' but with a whole new set of lyrics that started with Man,' instead of 'Girl,'and we pranced holding our 'cocks' like Mick Jagger, or whatever rock star we found really annoying, and it would just look ridiculous. And the audience was totally into the guerrilla theater of it. They'd shriek and grab at our legs like groupies. It was so much fun, laughing at a culture that had kept us down."
The Band went on tours through the Midwest and the East Coast, inviting women to join them who were willing to help with equipment and do a little partying. They played for audiences as varied at the Second Annual Third World Transvestite Ball, and to fourteen-year-old black girls at a summer camp for inner-city children.
The Band dissolved in 1973 for a complex set of reasons. As Naomi Weisstein notes, "This fact is not unusual; it even happened to the Beatles."
The Band had made musical history, probably the first feminist rock band ever, and the ancestor of the RiotGrrls. Lilith Faire, LadyFest and today's hard driving woman centered rockers.
"A lot of women came up to me after our shows and said,'I want to do that,' remembers Susan Abod, "and we tried to make them understand that they could. Any of them could. And I think a lot of them did."
China Group
The China Group organized the first trip to China by a women's liberation organization. They observed the changes in women's status that had resulted from the Chinese Revolution and then shared their insights with other Americans upon their return.
by Joan Berman (We have photos of the China trip in our Gallery Section)
The inspiration for the China Group was Ann Tompkins' visit to Chicago in 1971 during which she showed slides from the time she lived in the Peoples' Republic of China, (1966-1970?), during the Cultural Revolution. I had already been to Cuba with the Venceremos Brigade in 1970 and was eager to travel to other countries to see socialism/communism in action. I had thought to travel to Chile after the election of Salvador Allende as President, but friends said it was still too early to see the accomplishments; wait a while. So after seeing Ann's slides, I got excited about a trip to China.
Although it was still before the U.S. had diplomatic relations with the Peoples' Republic of China, I knew a a couple companeros from the Venceremos Brigade, who arranged their own trip through the Chinese Consulate in Ottawa. So I started talking up the idea of a women's trip to China to my friends and put a notice of a planning meeting in the CWLU newsletter, and, as they say, the rest is history. Some of the women who eventually joined our group had not previously been members of CWLU but were interested in the project. We started to meet to write a proposal for our group trip.
The members of the group had varying levels of knowledge, we also made a plan to study together, a reading list on China's history, political theory and social change and focusing on the role of women. We also worked on improving communication and relationship process within our group. Ann Tompkins, who had been a social worker in California before going to China, had written a small book on criticism and self-criticism, a process used by the Chinese to solve problems. We invited her to come to Chicago and work with us on this technique in a weekend retreat (one of many among the CWLU group).
After we submitted out proposal to the Chinese Consulate in Ottawa, we waited and continued our study group. It was during this time that President Richard Nixon made his first trip to China, paving the way for diplomatic relations. The group gathered around the television set at my house, sprawled in the bed, watching every move of his arrival and ceremonial visit. We waited so long for word on our proposal that some women in the group became discouraged and dropped out. When we finally got an approval from the Chinese, it was for a different time than requested, and with some changes in our itinerary, but we immediately accepted their term and made preparations for travel. We designated some members of the group as official photographers and others as official note takers, so we would have documentation of our visit.
We were the first Women's Liberation group to visit PRC, and, to our surprise, they were interested in learning from us. We made several presentations on our organization and its projects to delegates from the All China Women's Federation. On long train rides from city to city we had lengthy face to face and heart to heart chats with the two women, Lin and Tsing, who served as our guides and translators throughout the 3-week trip. The topics we discussed included the meaning and practice of lesbianism. We visited factories of various kinds, several small scale neighborhood manufacturing enterprises started by women in the community, hospitals and clinics, schools and day care centers. Everywhere we met with the Revolutionary Committee to hear statistics about workers and productions, and we asked about conditions of women's work and life.
We visited peoples' homes, in cities and in the countryside. We went to museums of history and art and culture, and historical sites and theater and acrobatic performances. After 3 weeks, we returned home and began sorting through hundreds of slides and hundreds of words, organizing them into a meaningful form. We showed slides to various groups and organizations, reliving our experience and interpreting it to others. We thought about writing a book, but didn't get any positive response from publishers. We developed a course curriculum which we first taught in the Liberation School, and later in a progressive program at De Paul University. Some of us also became active participants in the USCPFA. With these activities, we increased the knowledge and awareness of people about what was going on in the PRC and some of the amazing strides toward equality of women that had taken place in a country bound be traditions thousands of years old.
Where are we now? Many members of our group have moved away from Chicago. One of them continued her work and learning about China by working for China Books, first in Chicago and then moving to China Books's headquarters in San Francisco and has made several more trips to China. Although we had one MD in the group when we went, two others have since acquired an MD degree, including our youngest member, who was 11 years old at the time. The others went on from there to become a D.O.M. and uses acupuncture and other Chinese traditional treatments.
I've been to China with other women's groups two other times subsequently. During my 1985 trip I encountered our former translator Lin in her position as director for North America for the All China Women's Federation. Most recently, in 1995 I attended the NGO Forum in connection with the UN 4th World Conference on Women, this time with a group representing the Association for Women in Psychology.
Joan Berman is active in the CWLU Herstory Website Committee. She is a former China Group member now working as a psychotherapist and professional photographer.