In June 1984, Rich presented a speech at the International Conference of Women, Feminist Identity, and Society in Utrecht, Netherlands titled Notes Toward a Politics of Location. Her keynote speech is a major document on politics of location and the birth of the concept of female “locatedness.” In discussing the location from which women speak, Rich attempts to reconnect female thought and speech with the female body; specifically, with an intent of reclaiming the body through verbalizing self-representation. Further focusing on location, Rich begins the speech by noting that while at that moment in time she speaks these words in Europe, she has searched for these words in the United States. By acknowledging her location in an essay on the progression of the women’s movement, she expresses her concerns for all women, not limited to just women in her Providence. Through widening her audience to women across the whole wide world Rich not only influences a larger movement but more importantly, she invites all women to consider their existence. Through imagining geographical locations on a map as history and as a place where women are created, and further focusing on the geographical locations, Rich ask women to examine where they themselves were created. In an attempt to try to find a sense of belonging in the world, Rich asks the audience not to begin with a continent, country, or house, but to start with the geography closest to themselves –which is their body. Rich, therefore, challenges members of the audience and readers to form their own identity by refusing to be defined by the parameters of government, religion, and home. The essay hypothesizes where the women’s movement should be at the end of the 20th century. In an encouraging call for the women’s movement, Rich discusses how the movement for change is an evolution in itself. Through de-masculinizing itself and de-Westernizing itself, the movement becomes a critical mass of so many different, voices, languages and overall actions. She pleads that the movement must change in order to experience change. She further insists that women must change it. In her essay, Rich considers how one’s background might influence their identity. She furthers this notion by noting her own exploration of the body, her body, as female, as white, as Jewish and as a body in a nation. Rich is careful to define the location in which her writing takes place. Throughout her essay, Rich relates back to the concept of location. She recounts her growth towards understanding how the women’s movement grounded in the Western culture is limited to the concerns of white women to the Verbal and written indications of Black United States citizens. Such professions have allowed her to experience the meaning of her whiteness as a point of location for which she needed to take responsibility. In 1986, she later published the essay in her prose collection Blood, Bread, and Poetry.