A Changing of the Guard

Traditionalists, Feminists, and the New Face of Women in Congress, 1955 – 1976

Introduction

The third generation of women in Congress, the 39 individuals who entered the House and the Senate between 1955 and 1976, legislated during an era of upheaval in America. Overlapping social and political movements during this period—the civil rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s, the groundswell of protest against American intervention in the Vietnam War in the mid- to late 1960s, the women’s liberation movement and the sexual revolution of the 1960s and 1970s, and the Watergate Scandal and efforts to reform Congress in the 1970s—provided experience and impetus for a new group of feminist reformers. Within a decade, an older generation of women Members, most of whom believed they could best excel in a man’s world by conforming to male expectations, was supplanted by a younger group who challenged narrowly prescribed social roles and long-standing congressional practices.¹

Several trends persisted, however. As did the pioneer generation and the second generation, the third generation of women accounted for only a small fraction of the total population of Congress. At the peak of the third generation, 20 women served in the 87th Congress (1961–1963)—about 3.7 percent. The latter 1960s were the nadir for new women entering the institution; only 11 were elected or appointed to office during the entire decade. Moreover, the widow-familial succession, though less prevalent than in earlier generations, remained a primary route for women to Congress.

Yet, this group of Congresswomen began to embrace a unique legislative identity and an agenda that distinguished them from their predecessors. Representative Martha Griffiths, a central figure in the passage of gender-based civil rights legislation, vocalized this new mindset. First elected in 1954, Griffiths chafed at the deference senior Congresswomen showed to the traditions of the male-dominated institution. “The error of most women was they were trying to make the men who sat in Congress not disapprove of them,” Griffiths recalled years later. “I think they wanted to be liked, they didn’t want to make enemies. So they didn’t try to do things they thought the men would disapprove of. I didn’t give a damn whether the men approved or not.”² More often than not, the women elected to Congress after Griffiths shared her sentiment.

New Patterns

Political Experience, Committee Assignments, and Familial Connections

Outwardly, the greatest change in women’s participation in Congress was in their racial makeup. In 1964 Hawaii Representative Patsy Mink became the first Asian-American woman and the first woman of color in Congress; all 72 Congresswomen who preceded her were white. In 1968 Shirley Chisholm of Brooklyn, New York, became the first African-American woman elected to Congress. An unprecedented 17 African Americans were elected in the 93rd Congress (1973–1975), including three more women: Yvonne Burke of California, Cardiss Collins of Illinois, and Barbara Jordan of Texas. “There is no longer any need for any one to speak for all black women forever,” Burke told the Washington Post shortly before she and Jordan were elected to Congress. “I expect Shirley Chisholm is feeling relieved.”³ The first Hispanic-American woman in Congress, Ileana Ros-Lehtinen of Florida, was elected to the House nearly two decades later in 1989.

However, race and ethnicity were not the only dramatic changes in the characteristics of the women entering Congress; in the decades between 1955 and 1976, a new type of well-educated, professional candidate emerged. Women’s precongressional experiences merged reform backgrounds with specialized training, lengthy résumés and, increasingly, elective experience. Before 1955, just seven women in Congress held law degrees (the first was Kathryn O’Loughlin McCarthy of Kansas, elected in 1932). From 1955 through 1976, 10 of the women elected to Congress were lawyers, and several were graduates of the nation’s premier law schools. Of the 39 women who were elected or appointed to Congress during this period, 34 (87 percent) had postsecondary education.

Significantly, 14 of these women had served in state legislatures, making the third generation of women in Congress the first in which women elected with legislative experience outnumbered women who were elected as widows. For many women, service in the state legislature was an invaluable introduction to parliamentary procedure and legislative process. “I felt like a fish in just the right temperature of water, learning where the currents were and how to move with them when you wanted to get things done,” Millicent Fenwick recalled of her experience in the New Jersey assembly.⁴ Several women were legislative leaders: Ella Grasso of Connecticut was elected Democratic floor leader in the Connecticut house in 1955, Julia Hansen of Washington served as speaker pro tempore in the Washington house of representatives from 1955 to 1960, Florence Dwyer of New Jersey was appointed assistant majority leader of the New Jersey assembly in the 1950s, and Barbara Jordan was elected speaker pro tempore of the Texas senate in 1972. These achievements were considerable in 1969, when just 4 percent of all state legislators were women. By the end of the 1970s that figure had more than doubled to 10.3 percent.⁵ Women’s increased participation in state legislatures fueled their growing membership in Congress during the latter decades of the 20th century.

Other women, including Mink, Chisholm, Burke, Bella Abzug of New York, Elizabeth Holtzman of New York, and Patricia Schroeder of Colorado, gained valuable political experience as civil rights advocates or as Vietnam War dissenters. Though each had her own style of advocacy and her own public persona, these women were connected by the thread of modern feminism—assertively pursuing their agendas. Catherine Dean May of Washington, who served from 1959 to 1971 and whose legislative style was that of an earlier generation of women Members, noted the feminists’ immediate impact on Congress. “The arrival of personalities like Shirley Chisholm and Bella Abzug on the congressional scene shook our august body to its foundations,” May recalled. “Shirley and Bella were not what the male members of Congress had come to expect from a female colleague. They got just as demanding and as noisy and as difficult as men did!”⁶

The widow’s mandate, or familial connection, remained for women a significant route to Congress. Of the 39 women who entered Congress between 1955 and 1976, 12 directly succeeded their husbands. Charlotte Reid of Illinois replaced her late husband, GOP candidate Frank Reid, on the ballot when he died just weeks before the 1962 general election. Elaine Edwards of Louisiana was appointed by her husband, Louisiana Governor Edwin Edwards, to briefly fill a Senate vacancy in 1972. In all, 14 women in the third generation (36 percent) reached Congress via a familial connection. While many women served only as temporary placeholders (eight served a term or less), several, including Reid, Cardiss Collins, and Lindy Boggs of Louisiana, had long and distinguished careers. Moreover, as a group, the women in Congress during this era served an average of 4.5 House terms or 1.5 Senate terms (9 years)—longer, on average, than their predecessors from the second generation, who served 3.5 House terms, or slightly more than one Senate term.

The median age of the women elected to Congress between 1955 and 1976 rose one year, on average, to 50.1 years, despite the fact that five women were elected in their 30s (including the youngest woman ever elected to the House, Elizabeth Holtzman, at age 31 years, 7 months). The oldest woman elected to Congress during this period was 68-year-old Corrine Riley of South Carolina, who briefly succeeded her late husband to serve the remainder of his term during the 87th Congress (1961–1963). In the House, where all but two of the women elected during this period served, the average age of all new Members tended to be lower. In the late 1950s, the average age of new Members was 43 years. By the first three elections of the 1970s, the median age of all new House Members was 42.1. But even during the 1970s youth movement in the chamber, the women (at 47.9 years) still lagged behind the men by nearly 6 years. Moreover, 43 percent of the new male Representatives (93 of 216) elected in these elections were in their 20s or 30s.⁷ The practical result was that the men had a considerable advantage in accruing seniority at a younger age.

More explicitly than their predecessors, the women elected between 1955 and 1976 legislated regarding issues that affected women’s lives. Their feminism—their belief in the social, political, and economic equality of the sexes–shaped their agendas. Patsy Mink, a Representative from Hawaii and one of the first modern feminists elected to Congress, discovered early in her House career that, concerning women’s issues, she was a spokesperson, or a “surrogate representative,” for all American women.⁸ Mink recalled that “because there were only eight women at the time who were Members of Congress . . . I had a special burden to bear to speak for [all women], because they didn’t have people who could express their concerns for them adequately. So, I always felt that we were serving a dual role in Congress, representing our own districts and, at the same time, having to voice the concerns of the total population of women in the country.”⁹ The Congresswomen of this era tended to perceive themselves, and women in general, as being united by common bonds and life experiences as mothers, primary caregivers, and members of a patriarchal culture.¹⁰ These experiences led to interest in legislation to redress long-standing gender-based inequities in areas like health care and reproductive issues, hiring practices and compensation in the workplace, consumer advocacy, access to education, childcare, and welfare programs for single parents.

Congresswomen thus sought committee assignments, particularly on committees that allocated federal money, that would permit them to effect these changes. An unprecedented four women served on the powerful Appropriations Committee during this period—Julia Hansen of Washington, Edith Green of Oregon, Charlotte Reid, and Yvonne Burke. Lindy Boggs and Virginia Smith of Nebraska joined the committee at the beginning of the 95th Congress (1977–1979), just after the third generation. At the behest of a group of Congresswomen, Speaker Sam Rayburn appointed Martha Griffiths to the Joint Economic Committee in 1960 and to the prestigious Ways and Means Committee in 1961; these assignments had never been held by a woman. Martha Keys of Kansas won appointment to the Ways and Means Committee as a freshman after reforms in the mid-1970s opened prominent panels to junior Members. Marjorie Holt of Maryland, Patsy Mink, and Elizabeth Holtzman served on the newly created Budget Committee in the early 1970s. Women also had a growing voice in defense decisions as Patricia Schroeder and Marjorie Holt gained seats on the influential Armed Services Committee. Holtzman and Jordan served on the Judiciary Committee after their 1972 elections, and at the beginning of the 95th Congress, Shirley Chisholm became the first Democratic woman to sit on the Rules Committee. The most common committee assignments for women were Education and Labor and Government Operations, followed by Interior and Insular Affairs, Banking and Currency, District of Columbia, Public Works, Post Office and Civil Service, and Veterans’ Affairs.

Women also made advances in leadership in caucuses and committees. Most notably, a woman was Secretary for the Democratic Caucus—then the party’s fifth-ranking position—for most of the period from the mid-1950s to the mid-1980s.¹¹ Edna Kelly served as Caucus Secretary in the 83rd (1953–1955), 84th (1955–1957), and 88th (1963–1965) Congresses. Leonor Sullivan of Missouri held the post in the 86th and 87th Congresses (1959–1963) and in the 89th through the 93rd Congresses (1965–1975). Patsy Mink succeeded Sullivan in the 94th Congress (1975–1977). In the Senate, Margaret Chase Smith chaired the Republican Conference from the 90th through the 92nd Congresses (1967–1973); she was the highest-ranking woman in the party leadership in that chamber. While Leonor Sullivan was the only woman to chair a full committee during this period (Merchant Marine and Fisheries in the 93rd and 94th Congresses, from 1973 to 1977), a total of 10 women chaired 13 congressional subcommittees from 1955 to 1976. Julia Hansen quickly advanced to chair the Interior and Related Agencies Subcommittee of the powerful Appropriations Committee, becoming the first woman to serve in that capacity. Other women who chaired subcommittees included Gracie Pfost of Idaho, who headed the Public Lands Subcommittee of the Interior and Insular Affairs Committee, and Katherine Granahan of Pennsylvania, who chaired the Postal Operations Subcommittee of the Post Office and Civil Service Committee. Sullivan chaired the Merchant Marine and Fisheries’ Panama Canal Subcommittee and the Consumer Affairs Subcommittee of the Banking and Currency Committee. Maude Kee of West Virginia led three panels on the Veterans’ Affairs Committee: Education and Training, Administration, and Hospitals.¹²

Legislative Interests

Two key pieces of legislation—Title VII of the 1964 Civil Rights Act and the debate on the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA)—forged a unique bond of cooperation between women Members during this period. The emphasis on gender-based equality in these measures was echoed in a number of other legislative efforts, particularly in those aimed at creating opportunities for women in education and the workplace. Women Members continued to play a prominent part in legislation on diverse national concerns, ranging from Cold War defense strategy to internal congressional reforms. Central to this period was a group of federal reform programs known collectively as the Great Society. Initiated by President Lyndon Johnson in the mid-1960s, these measures were in many ways an extension of the social programs created during the New Deal. Great Society legislation marked the zenith of federal activism—addressing civil rights, urban development, the environment, health care, education, housing, consumer protection, and poverty. This legislation ranged from the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965, which ended racial segregation in America, to the enactment of a Medicare program for the elderly and a Medicaid program for the poor that provided access to hospitalization, optional medical insurance, and other health care benefits.¹³ Women participated in these efforts, decisively shaping some of them, often with a conscious eye toward improving the welfare of all American women.

Representative Martha Griffiths was the prototype for many young activists of the 1970s. One of the first career women elected to Congress, Griffiths had practiced law, served in the state legislature, and presided as a judge in her home state of Michigan. In the U.S. House, she honed in on sexual discrimination in the workplace. While Griffiths believed initially that taking cases to the Supreme Court could result in equality for women, she became so disillusioned with the high court’s rulings, she decided only gender-specific legislation could give women access to education, job security, and comparable pay for comparable work.¹⁴

As the Civil Rights Act of 1964 moved through committee and onto the House Floor for debate, Griffiths, joined by Catherine May, Edna Kelly, Frances Bolton of Ohio, and Katharine St. George of New York, resolved that Title VII, which contained language banning employers from discrimination in hiring on the basis of race, color, religion, or national origin, should also contain language banning discrimination in hiring on the basis of sex. The Congresswomen believed this language was necessary to protect women, reasoning that without it, they would be especially vulnerable to discrimination in hiring on the basis of their gender.¹⁵

In a parliamentary maneuver designed to derail the entire Civil Rights Act, powerful Rules Committee chairman Howard W. Smith of Virginia freighted the bill with controversial provisions and then proposed to extend protection against discrimination to women. Realizing that Smith could get more than 100 southern votes behind the amendment, Griffiths decided to let him introduce it. When he did, on February 8, 1964, the men on the House Floor erupted into guffaws that grew louder as the women Members rose to speak on behalf of the bill.

Debate on the amendment forged strange alliances; conservatives and segregationists lined up with progressive women. Opposing these unlikely allies were moderate and liberal northern Representatives who were fearful that the entire bill would be defeated. Griffiths stood in the well of the House and scolded the raucous Members, saying, “I suppose that if there had been any necessity to have pointed out that women were a second-class sex, the laughter would have proved it.” She touched on the history of enfranchisement for African-American men in the 19th century, noting that women—white and black—were denied the basic rights of citizenship guaranteed under the 14th and 15th Amendments. “A vote against this amendment” by a male Representative, she warned, “is a vote against his wife, or his widow, or his daughter, or his sister.” Other Congresswomen followed her lead. Only Edith Green objected to the amendment, noting that it was more important to first secure African-American civil rights: “For every discrimination I have suffered, I firmly believe that the Negro woman has suffered 10 times that amount of discrimination,” Green said. “She has a double discrimination. She was born as a woman and she was born as a Negro.”¹⁶

The debates were followed by a teller vote, in which Members filed down the aisles of the chamber to cast their votes. Smith chose Griffiths to count the “yes” votes. With many Members absenting themselves from the vote, the amendment passed 168 to 133. When this result was announced, a woman in the House Gallery cried out, “We made it! We are human!”¹⁷ Eventually, Smith’s tactic backfired, as the House and the Senate voted the full civil rights measure into law later that summer. Griffiths worked feverishly behind the scenes to ensure that the amended version of Title VII was left intact. Years later, after Smith had retired and was visiting the House Chamber, Griffiths greeted him with a hug, saying, “We will always be known for our amendment!” Smith replied, “Well, of course, you know, I offered it as a joke.”¹⁸

Griffiths also played a key role in the passage of another piece of landmark legislation—the Equal Rights Amendment. The ERA, drafted by suffragist Alice Paul and supported by the National Woman’s Party, was introduced to Congress in 1923 to commemorate the 75th anniversary of the 1848 Seneca Falls Convention.¹⁹ The original language of the ERA stated that “men and women shall have equal rights throughout the United States and in every place subject to its jurisdiction.”

For decades the ERA languished in the House Judiciary Committee and was a deeply divisive issue for many former suffragists and feminists. Advocates believed it would equalize conditions for women. Opponents insisted it would negate an accumulation of laws that protected working women. Earlier Congresswomen, such as Mary Norton of New Jersey and Caroline O’Day of New York, refused to endorse the ERA on the grounds that it would adversely affect labor laws. In 1940 the GOP adopted the ERA as part of its platform, and Winifred Stanley of New York and Margaret Chase Smith sponsored measures to bring it up for a vote on the 20th anniversary of the introduction of the original amendment. But passing the ERA out of committee was especially difficult, since the longtime chairman of the Judiciary Committee, Emanuel Celler of New York (1949–1953 and 1955–1973), opposed the measure on the traditional grounds that it would undermine labor protections. During this period, the language of the ERA was modified, making it less a crusade for change than an affirmation of existing constitutional guarantees. The new wording stipulated that “equal rights under the law shall not be abridged or denied . . . on account of sex.”

In 1970, Griffiths changed parliamentary tactics, using a discharge petition that required her to get a majority (218 of the 435 House Members) to support her effort to bring the bill out of committee and onto the floor for general debate and a vote. Griffiths obtained the 218 signatures and on August 10, 1970, opened debate on the bill on the House Floor, where it passed by a wide margin.²⁰ Later that fall the Senate voted to amend the ERA with a clause exempting women from the draft. However, the House and the Senate failed to work out their differences in conference committee before Congress adjourned for the year, forcing Griffiths to begin anew. Throughout this legislative battle, Griffiths received the nearly unanimous backing of liberal and conservative women Members. Congresswoman Louise Hicks of Massachusetts dismissed critics who suggested the law would force women into direct combat roles in places like Vietnam.²¹ “There is no reason why women should not carry equally the burdens as well as the rights of full citizenship,” she responded. “Indeed, most are willing or eager to do so.” The ERA was necessary, Hicks argued, because, “discrimination against women—on the job, in education, in civil and criminal law—is a disgrace to a nation which has longproclaimed its belief in equality before the law and individual dignity for allcitizens.”²² After Representative Griffiths again successfully maneuvered the ERA onto the House Floor, it won wide approval. The Senate accepted it withoutrevisions in March 1972.

However, the battle over the ERA had just begun and would continue into the early 1980s. By law, the constitutional amendment required the approval of three-quarters of the state legislatures within seven years. By the end of 1973, 30 states had ratified it. Five more states approved the amendment between 1974 and 1976, but “Stop ERA,” a grass-roots movement led by conservative activist Phyllis Schlafly, organized opposition, and several signatory states considered rescinding their support. Schlafly portrayed herself as a defender of women’s traditional roles as mothers and homemakers. During the 1970s, Schlafly (who ran for Congress as a Republican, unsuccessfully, in 1952 and 1970) declared that the small number of women in Congress “does not prove discrimination at all.” Rather, she said, it “proves only that most women do not want to do the things that must be done to win elections.”²³ Schlafly argued that the ERA would destroy protections for women in divorce law and child custody law, weaken laws for sex crimes against women, lead to women being drafted into the military, and undermine the institution of marriage. In a televised debate in 1976, Millicent Fenwick argued with Schlafly and her allies, who wanted the ERA stripped from the Republican Party platform.²⁴ Fenwick’s frustration was palpable: “I think it is sad and a little comic . . . in the Bicentennial year to be wondering about whether we ought to admit that 51 percent [to] 52 percent of the citizens of America are really citizens.”²⁵ By 1977, the ERA was still three states shy of the 38 it needed for ratification. The debate continued and later provided the crucial momentum Congresswomen needed to organize themselves as a formal group.

Economic Equality

The efforts associated with Title VII and the ERA were only the tip of the iceberg; legislation affecting women extended into virtually every facet of American life. A major goal was to achieve economic equality. Since World War II, Congresswomen had been promoting legislation to require equity in pay for men and women in similar jobs. Winifred Stanley introduced such a measure in 1943, but it failed to pass the House. Later, Edna Kelly, Florence Dwyer, Katharine St. George, and Katherine Granahan introduced equal-pay bills, which met with similar outcomes despite support from Presidents Harry Truman and Dwight Eisenhower, largely because of opposition from big business and its congressional allies. Congresswoman Granahan had introduced a measure to end gender-based wage discrimination in the 85th Congress (1957–1959). “When two workers, side by side, performing the same sort of work are doing it equally well, there is no justification under law or moral justice that they should not be accorded an equal opportunity for equal pay,” she said in a floor speech.²⁶ Women Members persisted. With Edith Green of Oregon shepherding it through Congress, the legislation passed the House in 1962 and eventually became law in 1963 when the House and the Senate agreed on a revised bill. The Equal Pay Act, which built on the Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938, decreed that no employer could pay a woman “at a rate less than the rate at which he pays wages to employees of the opposite sex . . . on jobs the performance of which requires equal skill, effort, and responsibility, and which are performed under similar working conditions.” The law allowed wage differences based on factors such as seniority and merit.²⁷

Economic opportunity had a racial component as well. Title VII of the 1964 Civil Rights Act created the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) to investigate unlawful employment practices and to report findings to Congress and the President. It also authorized the Attorney General to file a civil suit when employers showed a pattern of discrimination.²⁸ The EEOC became an important recourse for women and racial minorities. Yvonne Burke, who represented a large constituency of African Americans in the Los Angeles area, insisted that civil rights include economic equality as well as political equality. “True dignity, true freedom, are economic in 1974,” she said.²⁹ Congresswoman Burke championed the cause of minority women, eventually authoring the Displaced Homemakers Act to provide financial assistance and job training for divorced women and single mothers entering the job market.

Because they often managed the household budget and did most of the household shopping, women took a special interest in consumer affairs. Representative Leonor Sullivan was the leading advocate for consumer protection in the House. Sullivan’s signal piece of legislation was the 1968 Consumer Credit Protection Act, which established truth in lending provisions, requiring financial institutions to fully disclose the conditions and costs of borrowing. In the Senate, Maurine Neuberger advocated honest labeling on consumer items. She challenged the meat packing industry regarding its additives and criticized bedding manufacturers that sold flammable blankets. Neuberger also led the fight to regulate tobacco advertising and to require health warning labels on cigarette packaging.

Education

Education was another area in which women, long considered authorities, wrote and shepherded major measures through Congress. Coya Knutson of Minnesota and Edith Green were instrumental in developing the National Defense Education Act (NDEA) of 1958, which passed just one year after Russia’s successful launch of the Sputnik satellite sparked concern that American students lagged behind those in communist countries in critical subject areas. The NDEA provided $1 billion in federal loans and grants to subsidize science, mathematics, and foreign language study in U.S. universities and created the first federal college loans based on student need.

Federal aid for education was expanded dramatically during the Great Society, and two women played prominent legislative roles in the process. Patsy Mink helped shape Head Start legislation, which provided federal money to help communities meet the needs of disadvantaged preschool-aged children. Administered by the Department of Health and Human Services, Head Start provided comprehensive child development programs for children up to age five and their families. Mink’s Women’s Education Equity Act, which passed as part of a 1974 education bill, mandated the removal of gender stereotypes from school textbooks and provided federal incentives to educational programs that promoted gender equity. Edith Green, a former teacher, became known as the Mother of Higher Education for her leadership on school issues during her two decades in the U.S. House. Among Green’s landmark legislative achievements was the Higher Education Act of 1965, which created the first federal program providing financial assistance to undergraduates. In 1972, Congresswoman Green held the first hearings on discrimination against women in college sports programs. Both Green and Mink sponsored Title IX, one of the 1972 federal education amendments, which provided that “No person in the United States shall, on the basis of sex, be excluded from participation in, be denied the benefits of, or be subjected to discrimination under any education program or activity receiving federal financial assistance.”

Foreign Policy

The Cold War dominated U.S. foreign policy throughout the period from 1955 to 1976. During the Eisenhower administration, the United States stockpiled nuclear weapons and enhanced its missile and aircraft delivery systems to deter Soviet leaders from carrying out aggressive military actions around the globe. The Soviets, too, developed nuclear capabilities and engaged Washington in a game of strategic brinksmanship. This policy nearly resulted in a nuclear exchange in 1962 during the Cuban Missile Crisis, when the John F. Kennedy administration instituted a naval “quarantine” of Cuba after discovering that the Soviet government, under Nikita Khrushchev, had secretly placed intermediate-range nuclear missiles on the communist-controlled island. After backing away from nuclear apocalypse, the two superpowers tacitly agreed to avoid direct confrontations.

However, the Cold War had moved into a new phase in the developing world, as the Soviets and Americans vied for the support of postcolonial governments in Africa, the Middle East, and Asia. Though careful not to challenge one another directly, Washington and Moscow poured economic and military aid into these regions and underwrote “proxy wars” fought by indigenous peoples. Beginning in 1954, America became the primary benefactor of the Ngo Dinh Diem regime in South Vietnam in a civil war against the communist-controlled government of Ho Chi Minh in North Vietnam. A decade later, in July 1965, after it became clear that the South could not win alone, the United States intervened directly against North Vietnamese forces and communist rebels. By late 1967, more than 485,000 U.S. troops were stationed in Vietnam. Eventually, some 2 million Americans served in Vietnam, and more than 58,000 of them died. Vietnamese losses were staggering; during the civil war from 1954 to 1975, more than 1.1 million North Vietnamese soldiers and Viet Cong rebels were killed and nearly 2 million North and South Vietnamese civilians perished. U.S. intervention spurred a massive antiwar protest movement that had spread by the late 1960s from college campuses to large cities, drawing Americans from all walks of life.³⁰

The Vietnam War divided women Members. Charlotte Reid and Edna Kelly were ardent supporters of military intervention. Edith Green was one of a handful to oppose her party and the President when the Johnson administration sought funding for the initial American intervention. A number of women who entered Congress during this period, including Mink, Chisholm, Abzug, and Schroeder, won election as antiwar candidates. With much fanfare, Abzug introduced legislation to withdraw U.S. troops from South Vietnam and to impeach President Richard Nixon for his prosecution of the war. Schroeder, who became in 1973 only the third woman ever to sit on the House Armed Services Committee, was in the 1970s and 1980s a particularly vocal advocate of reining in defense spending and securing new arms control accords. She was determined to bring women’s perspectives to a debate from which they had been largely excluded. “When men talk about defense, they always claim to be protecting women and children,” Schroeder said, “but they never ask the women and children what they think.”³¹ Other Congresswomen advocated more vigorous U.S. support for international human rights. Two New Jersey Representatives emerged as critics of authoritarian governments allied with America in the Cold War against the Soviets. Helen Meyner criticized human rights abuses by Ferdinand Marcos’s government in the Philippines, seeking to cut U.S. aid to the regime. Millicent Fenwick helped craft the Helsinki Accords on Human Rights, which investigated abuses behind the communist iron curtain, and openly challenged American support for dictatorial regimes in the Middle East and Africa.

Reform and Congressional Accountability

Women also participated in several efforts to make congressional operations more transparent and accountable and to circumvent procedural attempts to block legislation. For example, in 1961, Representative Florence Dwyer of New Jersey was one of about two dozen northern Republicans from urban districts who sided with Speaker Sam Rayburn and liberal Democrats as the House pushed through a measure to expand the membership of the Rules Committee, which controlled the flow of legislation to the House Floor. Chairman Howard Smith, a conservative Democrat from Virginia, had used his power to block social legislation. By assigning more liberal Members to the committee, the House paved the way for the consideration in subsequent years of major bills like the Civil Rights Act of 1964.

Later in the 1960s, the Committee on Standards of Official Conduct (commonly known as the Ethics Committee) was formed to provide Members with ethics guidelines and to investigate violations of House practice. Like many other Members, Congresswoman Edna Kelly had financed her campaigns out of her own pocketbook. She recalled that that practice changed in the 1960s as an increasing number of her colleagues relied on fundraising events to pay for the costs of biannual elections. Believing this new system could be abused, Kelly became a founding member of the Ethics Committee in 1967 and helped draft the committee’s operating procedures.³² Representative Millicent Fenwick earned the epithet Conscience of Congress for her repeated appeals to colleagues to reform the campaign finance system. Elected in 1974, Fenwick had a tendency to speak out on the House Floor that prompted Wayne Hays of Ohio, the powerful chairman of the House Administration Committee, to threaten to withhold her staff’s paychecks “if that woman doesn’t sit down and keep quiet.”³³ Undeterred, Fenwick directly challenged Hays, who shortly afterward fell victim to scandal and left the House.

The Watergate Scandal was one of the defining political events of the 20th century and a moment of constitutional crisis. It grew out of the culture of suspicion within the Nixon administration, the obsession with secrecy that characterized Cold War national security imperatives, and the related expansion of presidential power.³⁴ Clandestine Central Intelligence Agency and Federal Bureau of Investigation surveillance operations had been authorized by President Nixon in 1970 against domestic opponents, antiwar protestors, and government officials suspected of leaking classified material about the planning for the Vietnam War. In 1972, the Committee to Re-Elect the President (CREEP), headed by former Attorney General John Mitchell, approved a plan to wiretap the phones of the Democratic National Committee in the Watergate complex in Washington, D.C. The June 17, 1972, break-in was botched, and the perpetrators were arrested. The ensuing cover-up involved senior administration officials and even the President himself.

Over a period of nearly two years, the details of the story gradually came to light through a combination of investigative journalism, judicial action, and legislative inquiries. In February 1973, the Senate created the Committee on Presidential Campaign Activities (widely known as the Ervin Committee, after its chairman, Sam Ervin of North Carolina) to investigate the break-in. By 1974, after a series of indictments and resignations involving top officials in the Nixon administration, the House Judiciary Committee initiated formal proceedings to impeach the President. When the committee voted to support articles of impeachment, President Nixon resigned on August 9, 1974. Two first-term Congresswomen, Barbara Jordan and Liz Holtzman, served on the Judiciary Committee during the impeachment process. A large television audience was mesmerized by Jordan’s eloquence on the immense constitutional questions that hung in the balance. Her work on the committee transformed her into a national figure. Holtzman, too, earned a reputation as an erudite member of the panel, particularly for her sharp questioning of President Gerald Ford, who later testified before the committee to explain his pardon of Nixon in September 1974.

Watergate and mounting concerns over the abuse of power in federal agencies spurred Congresswomen like Bella Abzug to make government more accountable to the public. As chair of a Government Affairs subcommittee, Abzug shepherded through the House the Privacy Act of 1974, which expanded “sunshine laws,” making government records more available for public scrutiny. A companion to the Freedom of Information Act of 1966, which allowed private citizens access to government records, the Privacy Act permitted individuals to view federal records about themselves and to amend inaccuracies. The Privacy Act also required government agencies to publish descriptions of their record-keeping systems and prohibited the disclosure of personal information to third parties.³⁵

Much of the effort to reform government during this era was focused on Capitol Hill itself. One of the most important attempts to reform House practices and procedures was undertaken by the Democratic Caucus’s Committee on Organization, Study, and Review, later known as the Hansen Committee for its chair, Representative Julia Hansen. The Hansen Committee was part of a larger effort to overhaul internal congressional procedures, a task begun by liberal reformers as far back as the 1930s. For several decades, most of these efforts were consistently blunted by conservative southern Democrats, who held the most powerful committee posts and perceived reform as a threat to their autonomy. Reformers sought to centralize the Democratic Party’s decision-making process, to diminish the power of autocratic committee chairs, to provide better resources for subcommittees and, generally, to make the system more responsive to rank-and-file Members and the public.³⁶ By the early 1970s, junior Members like Ella Grasso argued that the tenure-based committee system had to be reformed so that chairs would be chosen “on the basis of intelligence and leadership.” Grasso explained that the party would be best served by permitting “all the qualities of intelligence and vigor in the House Democratic membership to have full effect.”³⁷

Members’ respect for Hansen and her moderate approach made her a logical choice to head the panel, which reviewed radical proposals put forward by a select committee led by Representative Richard Bolling of Missouri in 1973–1974. The Bolling Committee recommended altering committee jurisdictions, abolishing some panels entirely, and expanding resources for subcommittees. But the House approved the recommendations of the Hansen Committee in the fall of 1974, leaving jurisdictions intact but weakening chairmen by further curbing the power of the Rules Committee and expanding the membership and the resources of subcommittees.³⁸ Reform efforts during this period resulted in better committee assignments for new Members and allowed them to participate more directly in the formulation of party strategy and legislation. Gladys Spellman of Maryland, one of the early leaders of the House freshman class of 1974, the so-called “Watergate Babies,” helped conduct a review of entrenched committee chairmen. Several of the most powerful—W.R. Poage of Texas of the Agriculture Committee, Felix Edward Hébert of Louisiana of the Armed Services Committee, and Wright Patman of Texas of the Committee on Banking and Currency—were forced from their positions in rapid succession.

Identity: Changing Social and Institutional Perceptions About Women

After the disruption, alienation, and insecurity of the Great Depression and the Second World War, the family, more so than ever before, became the center of American life. Couples wed early (in the late 1950s the average age of American women at marriage was 20) and in proportions that surpassed those of all previous eras and have not been equaled since. They reared large families. Many moved to sprawling, affordable tract housing developments in the suburbs, bought modern conveniences ranging from cars to dishwashers, and enjoyed more leisure time.

Postwar prosperity made the banalities of housework less taxing but often came at a cost to the women who gave up careers to maintain the domestic sphere. This lifestyle stressed the importance of a one-income household, with the husband working and the wife staying at home to raise the children. Historian Elaine Tyler May called it a kind of “domestic containment”: In seeking to nurture their families in the suburbs of the 1950s, housewives and mothers often gave up their aspirations for fulfillment outside the home.³⁹ For instance, the decline in the proportion of women who sought higher education degrees can be attributed in large part to marital and familial priorities. In 1920, 47 percent of college students were women; by 1958, that figure stood at 38 percent, despite the availability of more federal aid to pay for university education.⁴⁰

Social expectations for what constituted a woman’s proper role outside the home constrained women Members of Congress as well. When asked if women were handicapped in the rough-and-tumble of political campaigns because society held them to different standards than men, Maurine Neuberger, who served for years in the Oregon legislature before succeeding her late husband in the U.S. Senate, replied, “Definitely. . . . A woman enters into a man’s world of politics, into back-fighting and grubbing. Before she puts her name on the ballot, she encounters prejudice and people saying, ‘A woman’s place is in the home.’ She has to walk a very tight wire in conducting her campaign. She can’t be too pussyfooting or mousy. Also, she can’t go to the other extreme: belligerent, coarse, nasty.”⁴¹ Congresswoman Gracie Pfost observed that a woman seeking political office “must be willing to have her every motive challenged, her every move criticized,” and added that she “must submit to having her private life scrutinized under a microscope . . . and [being] the subject of devastating rumors every day.”⁴²

The primacy of family responsibilities and the power of society’s expectations of what constituted a “woman’s sphere” in the 1950s is aptly illustrated by the demise of Coya Knutson’s congressional career. The first woman to represent Minnesota, Knutson was an early advocate for the creation of a food stamp program, funding for school lunches, and federal student loans. But after two terms, her abusive husband sabotaged her promising career by conspiring with her opposition to publicly embarrass Knutson. He accused her (falsely) of neglecting their family, which included a young adopted son, and of having an affair with a Washington aide. The press sensationalized the story, along with Andy Knutson’s plea, “Coya come home.” In the 1958 elections, Knutson’s opposition subtly exploited this theme, and her constituents voted her out of office by a slim 1,390-vote margin. Although the House elections subcommittee agreed with Knutson’s complaint that the accusations had contributed to her defeat, the damage had been done. Knutson’s 1960 bid for re-election failed by an even wider margin.

Knutson’s experience reinforced the widely held perception that women politicians could not manage both a career and family. The debate over balancing domestic responsibilities and professional life lasted well into the 1990s, and though male political opponents were less inclined to exploit it in latter decades, women politicians were repeatedly put on the defensive by the media and constituents who raised the issue.

Shifting social norms quickly altered staid notions of domesticity. Amidst the routine of household duties, many postwar wives and mothers were frustrated by their lack of professional fulfillment. Betty Friedan memorably identified this malaise as “the problem with no name” in her landmark book The Feminine Mystique (1963). The book’s popularity attested to Friedan’s connection with a feeling of discontent. Daughters who came of age in the 1960s were determined to make their lives less constrained than those of their mothers. Consequently, the women’s rights movement and the sexual revolution of the 1960s challenged many of the traditional notions of motherhood and marital relationships.⁴³ Many young women rejected the sexual conventions of their parents’ generation. Open discussion of sexuality and cohabitation outside marriage became more socially accepted. As birth control became more widely available, women exercised greater control over when, or if, they would have children. In the landmark Roe v. Wade (1973) decision, the Supreme Court upheld on the grounds of privacy a woman’s constitutional right to terminate her pregnancy.

Sexual and reproductive freedom provided more options for women, who previously chose either a career or marriage. By the 1970s, many marriages involved two careers, as both the husband and the wife worked and, increasingly, shared familial duties. These added stress to family life. The divorce rate rose, and the phenomenon of the single, working mother became more commonplace. Yet, throughout this period, more young women pursued careers in traditionally male-dominated fields such as law, medicine, and business—loosening their bonds to home and hearth and preparing the way for a new and larger generation of women in state and national politics.

These changes profoundly altered the characteristics of the women who were elected to Congress from the 1970s onward. As younger women entered the institution, they faced questions about motherhood and family. Like many of their contemporaries outside politics, some Congresswomen chose motherhood as well as a career. In November 1973, a year after winning election to the U.S. House, Yvonne Burke gave birth to a daughter, Autumn, becoming the first sitting Member of Congress to become a mother.

Young mothers in Congress entered territory where few, if any, of their predecessors could provide guidance. Representative Schroeder recalled that several weeks after her first election, Congresswoman Bella Abzug telephoned to congratulate her. Abzug then asked incredulously how Schroeder, the mother of two young children, planned to maintain two careers: Representative and mom. “I told her I really wasn’t sure and had hoped she would give the answer, not ask the question!”^44"> Schroeder said. ⁴⁴ Service in Congress, she recalled, placed many extra demands on her family and required some creativity on her part—bringing diapers onto the House Floor in her handbag, keeping a bowl of crayons on her office coffee table, moving the family wholesale from Denver to Washington, and contending with her husband’s decision to leave his career to follow hers.⁴⁵ Schroeder’s contemporaries and later women Members often echoed her descriptions of the disruption and uprooting of familial rhythms.

Challenging the Institution

The younger generation of feminist lawmakers also tended to buck many of Capitol Hill’s most visible discriminatory and patronizing practices. In the 1960s, Patsy Mink publicly protested the House gym’s exclusionary policy towards women by marching on the facility with Charlotte Reid and Catherine Dean May. “It was just a symbolic gesture that there are so many ways in which sex discrimination manifests itself in the form of social custom, mores or whatever, that you really have to make an issue whenever it strikes to protest it,” Mink recalled. “You can’t tolerate it.”⁴⁶ The women also complained that the only bathroom facilities directly off the House Floor were for men. By the early 1960s, there were nearly 20 women Members sharing a single lavatory. Congresswoman Edith Green appealed to the House Administration Committee to set aside a space for the women, and in 1962, they were assigned a suite off the Old House Chamber that included a powder room, a kitchen, and a sitting area. Eventually the suite was named the Lindy Claiborne Boggs Congressional Women’s Reading Room in honor of Representative Boggs’s long service to the institution.⁴⁷

Deviating from traditional dress codes was another way women challenged congressional custom. Bella Abzug broke long-standing tradition when she insisted on wearing her trademark hat onto the House Floor. Others followed her lead, often contending with resistance and outright scorn. “The day I wore a pants suit onto the floor you’d have thought I asked for a land base for China,” Armed Services member Pat Schroeder told a local newspaper. “I just want to do my job. Does it make any difference if I have a bow in my hair or not?”⁴⁸

Feminists not only challenged their male colleagues; they also questioned the conviction, prevalent among the older generation of Congresswomen, that they should not organize to champion their own agenda. In 1971, Bella Abzug and Shirley Chisholm helped organize the National Women’s Political Caucus to promote greater participation of women in all aspects of U.S. politics. More than 320 women attended the founding conference in Washington, D.C.⁴⁹ Abzug, Chisholm, and other new Members, including Schroeder and Holtzman, pushed to create a formal congressional women’s caucus, both to organize women and to educate the rank-and-file Membership about issues of special importance to women. Early efforts floundered, however, without the sanction of senior women leaders. The most influential among them—Leonor Sullivan, Julia Hansen, and Edith Green—subscribed to more-traditional views and generally hoped to avoid the establishment of a women’s caucus.⁵⁰

This clash was primarily generational rather than ideological, pitting older Democratic Members against a younger cadre of party members. By 1970, the dean of congressional women was 68-year-old Representative Sullivan, who proved far more traditional than many of her younger colleagues. She was the only Congresswoman to vote against the Equal Rights Amendment, not only because she believed it was a threat to labor laws, but because she believed it would jeopardize the family. “I believe that wholesome family life is the backbone of civilization,” Sullivan said. Passage of the ERA would “accelerate the breakup of home life.”⁵¹ She added, “There are differences between male and female roles in our society and I hope there always are.”⁵² Sullivan refused to countenance a women’s caucus because she believed it unnecessary and a possible affront to male colleagues. Julia Hansen, a pioneer at virtually every level of Washington state government, also showed little support for a women’s caucus. Having made her way in the male political world principally by hard work, talent, and determination, without benefit of caucuses or women’s groups, Hansen was reluctant to advocate a caucus that would distinguish her based on her gender.⁵³ Caucus advocates also received no support from Edith Green. Like Sullivan, Representative Green viewed a potential women’s caucus as a polarizing force that would do little to ease divisions and might even hinder legislation that addressed inequities for women and minorities.⁵⁴

Other factors added to the reluctance to create a women’s group. The leadership’s lack of support for the effort led some women to question the legitimacy and staying power of a women’s caucus. Others, elected by more-conservative constituencies, feared they might alienate voters by joining a group that likely would advocate nontraditional issues. Also, many Members were particularly concerned with the probable participation of Bella Abzug, a domineering and highly partisan Member some feared might quickly become the public face of the caucus.

New impetus for organization came after Sullivan, Green, and Hansen retired in the mid-1970s and Abzug left the House to run for the Senate in 1976. By 1977, the deans of House women—Republican Margaret Heckler of Massachusetts and Democrat Shirley Chisholm of New York, elected in 1966 and 1968, respectively— had only about a decade of seniority.⁵⁵ These changes enabled a renewed effort to form a women’s caucus and continued emphasis on legislation that addressed women’s economic, social, and health concerns.