Charting A New Course

The mystery vexes Pat Schroeder. She sits in her small office and stares at the pearl-gray walls, her gaze drifting over the pillow embroidered with “She Won - We Won.”

Schroeder has a few facts and a working hypothesis that explain why there are so few women in Congress, but no clue to the solution. Her theory is that a society, or a nation, is only as strong as its weakest link.

“An important weak link is that women haven’t figured out how to use their political power very well,” she mused, as if gently tugging a thread of thought to see where it might lead.

“I am astounded that we, as women, 75 years after having won the right to vote, have not used our vote much more effectively. The mystery is why.”

Schroeder has tracked this mystery for 24 years as a Democratic member of Congress from Colorado. She championed women’s rights during her 12 terms and now has decided to try a new approach. She announced her resignation from Congress effective January 1997.

“My feelings are very mixed about leaving Congress,” said Schroeder, regarded as the dean of women in Congress. “I have had a very wonderful time being there. I never wanted to be a lifer, but every two years I talked myself into running for re-election. If I don’t get out now, I’m going to be nearly 60 after another term. So if I am really going to do anything else except be in the Congress, the time has come.

“Ageism is alive and well, especially against women. I don’t want to wait until I’m too old to do other things with my life.”

Schroeder, 55, propped her feet on a footlocker.

“I really hate to leave Congress because it’s been my whole adult life. I have gone from toilet training my children to menopause while serving in Congress. On the other hand, there is the excitement of ‘Wow, now what am I going to do with the rest of my life?’ I feel a mingling of regret and optimism. But when you close one door, you wonder what other door is going to open in front of you.”

Schroeder is driven by more than a personal urgency in making this change in her life.

“We have a system that has never really allowed women to participate, nor encouraged them very much to realize their full potential,” she said. “I am still absolutely astounded how we bind women’s minds.”

Part of her decision to resign, Schroeder said, was based on her inability to change such a system from her seat in Congress.

“While I celebrate the progress we have made, I mourn for the progress we have not made,” she said. “Ours has been a society that tells women that they are supposed to be passive. Women are supposed to be the cheerleaders, not the power players in the huddle. When we want to be in the huddle, we are accused of being too pushy.

“I had hoped that we, as a society and a nation, would have been over many more hurdles than we have made it over.”

She leaned forward in her black-lacquered, cane-bottomed chair as if to confide a deep personal insight.

“I am terrible disappointed that only 10 percent of the House is female, and all sorts of women didn’t vote in 1994. Therefore, the inmates are running the asylum. That’s my exasperation.”

With Schroeder, the personal is political. Taking the politics out of Schroeder is as feasible as taking the wetness out of water.

Her retirement announcement gladdened her opponents and caused dismay among her supporters. The outspoken, blunt, frank, brash, liberal Schroeder carried the flag in Congress for women’s rights and family issues. She was co-chair of the Congressional Caucus for Women’s Issues, which launched an effort to improve women’s health policies with The Women Health Equity Act. She served on the House Armed Services Committee, once a male sanctum. She has not been shy about going toe-to-toe with the good old boys under the Dome.

She introduced the bill banning discrimination against gays and lesbians in the military.

The male conservatives on the Hill have long considered her a pain in the neck.

“The old bulls did everything they could to make my life miserable,” Schroeder said of her early days in Congress. “I take a lot of crap from those guys, but I can give it right back just as hard.

“The current kill-or-be-killed political climate is not why I’m retiring. That doesn’t cause me to run and hide, although I don’t like the tenor of politics in the current Congress. The tone is nastier now than ever before, with all the name-calling. The Newt Gingrich Republicans see politics as warfare, winner take all. I think that the Congress is now like a banana republic run by bossism.”

Her exasperation has led her to seek new avenues and approaches outside the government to women’s rights issues.

“I hope that by getting out of Congress and having something of an emeritus status, people will listen to me a little more, instead of just dismissing me as another politician,” she said.

Her top three issues are the inequality of women in the workplace, the deteriorating state of the family and the erosion of community.

“There are some very serious things I want to discuss. Whether I do that through journalism, or the broadcast media, or in a university setting, or a foundation or write books, I don’t know. I don’t know where I’ll go yet.”