GhLinks Media
Former Rep. Pat Schroeder, who was a pioneer for women’s and family rights in Congress, died Monday night, her former press secretary said.
She was 82.
Probable cause of death
Schroeder’s former press secretary, Andrea Camp, said Schroeder suffered a stroke recently and died at a hospital in Florida, the state where she had been residing.
Who was Pat Schroeder?
Patricia Nell Scott Schroeder was an American politician who represented Colorado in the United States House of Representatives from 1973 to 1997.
Schroeder took on the powerful elite with her rapier wit and antics for 24 years, shaking up stodgy government institutions by forcing them to acknowledge that women had a role in government.
Her unorthodox methods cost her important committee posts, but Schroeder said she wasn’t willing to join what she called “the good old boys’ club″ just to score political points. Unafraid of embarrassing her congressional colleagues in public, she became an icon for the feminist movement.
Schroeder was elected to Congress in Colorado in 1972 and became one of its most influential Democrats as she won easy reelection 11 times from her safe district in Denver. Despite her seniority, she was never appointed to head a committee.
Schroeder helped forge several Democratic majorities before deciding in 1997 it was time to leave. Her parting shot in 1998 was a book titled “24 Years of Housework … and the Place is Still a Mess. My Life in Politics,″ which chronicled her frustration with male domination and the slow pace of change in federal institutions.
In 1987, Schroeder tested the waters for the presidency, mounting a fundraising drive after fellow Coloradan Gary Hart pulled out of the race. She announced three months later that she would not run and said her “tears signify compassion, not weakness.” Her heart was not in it, she said, and she 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 Hebert thought the committee was no place for a woman or an African American and they were each worth only half a seat.
