To Save the World Through Women

Abstract

Jocelyn Olcott’s book on the International Women’s Year (IWY) in Mexico City captures an astonishing United Nations gathering, one of great hope, fear, anger, resentment, passion, and joy—as well as one of powerful implications, which is overdue for book-length treatment. Most likely, 1975 is better known to the readers of this journal for the findings of Frank Church’s Senate committee on intelligence activities, or the U.S. flight from Saigon. Readers may recall, too, a year of crisis and change on many fronts—the lingering effects of the OPEC embargo following the Yom Kippur War, the rise of African nationalist parties to challenge the Portuguese in Angola and white-minority rule in Rhodesia, the violent aftermath of the coup against Salvador Allende—all of them a combustible mix of military oppression, apartheid, anti-colonialism, and economic challenge even as the Helsinki agreements helped usher in a “Final Act” for the Cold War. Perhaps less remembered is that the unlikely soundtrack of “Love will Keep Us Together” dominated the airwaves that summer, reaching gold record status by the end of the conference; for the first time, listeners in Mexico City could enjoy the Captain and Tenille’s chart breaker simultaneously in Spanish (“Por Amor Viviremos”).