WASHINGTON — Former US Representative Pat Schroeder, a pioneer for women’s and family rights in Congress, died Monday night. She was 82 years old.
Schroeder’s former press secretary, Andrea Camp, said Schroeder recently suffered a stroke and died at a hospital in Florida, the state where he resided.
Schroeder took on the powerful elite with her wits and antics for 24 years, shaking up boring government institutions and forcing them to recognize that women had a role in government.
Her unorthodox methods cost her important committee seats, but Schroeder said she was not about to join what she called «the good old friends club» just to score political points. Not afraid to embarrass her congressional colleagues in public, she became an icon of the feminist movement.
Schroeder was elected to Congress in Colorado in 1972 and became one of its most influential Democrats, winning easy re-election 11 times from her safe district in Denver. Despite her seniority, she was never appointed to head a committee.
Schroeder helped carve out several Democratic majorities before deciding in 1997 that it was time to go. The farewell to him in 1998 was a book entitled “24 years of domestic work … and the place is still a mess. My Life in Politics”, which recounts her frustration with male dominance and the slow pace of change in federal institutions.
In 1987, Schroeder tested the waters for the presidency, mounting a fundraising campaign after fellow Colorado man Gary Hart withdrew from the race. He announced three months later that he would not race, saying that his «tears mean compassion, not weakness.» His heart was not in it, he said, and he thought fundraising was demeaning.
She was the first woman on the House Armed Services Committee, but was forced to share a chair with U.S. Rep. Ron Dellums, D-Calif., the first African-American, when committee chairman F. Edward Hebert, D -La., organized the panel. Schroeder said that Hebert thought the committee was no place for a woman or an African-American and that they were each worth only half a seat.
Republicans were furious after Schroeder and others filed an ethics complaint about House Speaker Newt Gingrich’s televised college lecture series, alleging that the free cable time he received amounted to an illegal gift under House rules. Camera. Gingrich became the first speaker to be reprimanded by Congress. Gingrich later said that he regretted not taking Schroeder and his colleagues more seriously.
Previously, she had criticized Gingrich for suggesting that women should not serve in combat because they could pick up infections from being in a trench for 30 days. According to her official House biography, she once told Pentagon officials that if they were women, they would always be pregnant because they never said «no.»
When asked by a congressman how she could be the mother of two young children and a member of Congress at the same time, she replied: «I have a brain and a uterus, and I use both.»
It was Schroeder who dubbed President Ronald Reagan the «Teflon» president for his ability to avoid blame for major policy decisions, and the name stuck.
One of Schroeder’s biggest victories was the signing of a family leave bill in 1993, which provides job protection for caring for a newborn, sick child, or parent.
“Pat Schroeder led the way. Every woman in this house is following in her footsteps,” said Rep. Nita Lowey, DN.Y., who replaced Schroeder as the Democratic chair of the bipartisan congressional caucus on women’s issues.
Schroeder said lawmakers paid too much attention to taxpayers and special interests. When House Republicans gathered on the steps of the US Capitol to celebrate his first 100 days in power in 1994, she and several attendees climbed to the top of the building and hung a 15-foot red banner It said «Sold».
As a pilot, Schroeder earned his way through Harvard Law School with his own flight service. Schroeder became a professor at Princeton University after leaving Congress, but she said politics was in her blood and she would continue to work for candidates she supported.
For a time, he taught a graduate course entitled «The Politics of Poverty.» She also headed the American Publishers Association.
He later moved to Florida, where he continued to dabble in politics.
Schroeder was born in Portland, Oregon, on July 30, 1940. She graduated from the University of Minnesota before earning her law degree in 1964. From 1964 to 1966, she was a field attorney for the National Labor Relations Board.
She married James W. Schroeder in 1962. The couple had two children, Scott and Jamie.