Assembling, Amplifying, and Ascending

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Recent Trends Among Women in Congress, 1977–2006

Institutional Developments

American politics in the late 20th century were shaped largely by the Vietnam War and the Watergate Scandal. Public approval of government plummeted as many Americans accused officials of secretly enlarging and then mismanaging the war in Southeast Asia and of abusing the constitutional powers of the presidency. Poll after poll revealed that Americans felt dissatisfied with and disconnected from their elected leaders.

In Congress, major changes resulted from the turbulent era of the 1960s and 1970s. Post-Watergate reforms opened congressional proceedings to the public, and committee hearings were largely opened to the public and to broadcasters. In 1979, the House began televising live broadcasts of House Floor proceedings with the Senate following suit several years later. This publicity not only made government more transparent, but it also exposed the partisanship of debates once settled behind closed doors.²⁷

In 1994, during the “Republican Revolution,” the GOP gained control of the House for the first time in 40 years—running on a national platform that featured a conservative document called the “Contract with America.” Led by Speaker Newt Gingrich, the Republicans passed through the House large parts of their Contract, which promised to cut back welfare and entitlement programs, shrink federal bureaucracy, and reform House procedures. These efforts resulted in sharp ideological debates that were exacerbated by a shutdown of the federal government in 1995. In 1998, the partisanship in the closely divided Congress reached a new level of rancor, as the House impeached President Clinton based on his testimony about his extramarital relationship with a White House intern. However, the Senate failed to gain the two-thirds majority necessary to remove the President from office.

It was against this backdrop that the fourth generation of women entered Congress. An unprecedented ability to bring national attention to women’s issues helped these Congresswomen pass laws that affected women’s health, education, and concerns in the workplace as well as family life. Moreover, women emerged from the struggle for women’s rights in the 1960s and 1970s with a greater voice about a larger range of national issues. Over time, women Members authored legislation affecting every facet of American life—transportation and infrastructure, military affairs, international relations, economics, and social policy.

Committee Assignments

Unlike the Congresswomen of previous eras, the Congresswomen of this period had access to virtually all the committees in both Chambers, including the elite panels. A dozen of the women who entered the House from 1977 to 2005 served on the Appropriations Committee, 17 served on the Armed Services Committee, six women won seats on the Ways and Means Committee and also were assigned to on the Rules Committee. The most common committee assignments in the House reflected women’s changing role in American society in the latter part of the 20th century—particularly the trend of more women entering the workforce. More than two dozen women served on committees with jurisdiction over finance and business—the Budget Committee, the Financial Services Committee (formerly Banking and Financial Services), and the Small Business Committee. Barbara Mikulski became the first woman to gain a seat on the influential Commerce Committee in 1977; more than a dozen women followed her. The Transportation and Infrastructure Committee—long a vehicle for Representatives seeking federal funding for local projects—was the most popular committee assignment for women in this era; more than 30 women served on the panel. More than two dozen women also served on the Science Committee and on the Government Reform Committee, which has oversight of the federal workforce.

Although women in the House continued to serve on committees that were traditionally part of their province such as Veterans’ Affairs and Education and the Workforce (formerly Education and Labor), the number of women on these panels no longer outnumbered the number on the aforementioned panels. Moreover, while women still accounted for only a small number of the total membership of any given committee, their representation on key committees roughly equaled and, in some instances, exceeded their percentages in the chamber.²⁸

Women’s ability to secure better committee posts was most dramatic in the Senate, where the number of women in the chamber increased from one to 14 between 1977 and 2005. There were a number of “firsts.” Most notably, Nancy Kassebaum of Kansas served on four committees to which women had not been assigned—Budget (1979), Foreign Relations (1977), Environment and Public Works (1977), and Select Intelligence (1979). In 1977, Maryon Allen of Alabama, a widow who served a brief portion of her late husband’s term, was the first woman assigned to the influential Senate Judiciary Committee. The first women to serve a full term on that panel were Dianne Feinstein of California and Carol Moseley-Braun of Illinois. Moseley-Braun was also the first woman to serve on the powerful Senate Finance Committee (1993). As recently as 1997, Patty Murray of Washington became the first woman to serve on the Veterans’ Affairs Committee. As in the House, the most common committee assignments for women in the Senate—Armed Services; Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs; Commerce; Budget; Appro- priations; Energy and Natural Resources; Foreign Relations; and Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions—reflected American women’s expanded participation in the workplace and the military and in the formulation of foreign policy.

Legislative Interests

The Soviet bloc unraveled in the late 1980s as Moscow faced significant economic problems and resistance from its traditional Eastern European allies, particularly Poland. In the fall of 1989, the Berlin Wall—an internationally recognized symbol of the division of Europe—was opened, and the flow of people and commerce between West Germany and East Germany was renewed. By the early 1990s, the Soviet Union had disintegrated under the weight of a global struggle against the Western Alliance. For the first time in at least two generations, international affairs became less important to the ordinary American. (However, this temporary shift was radically altered by the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001.)

With the end of the Cold War, the national focus turned to domestic matters, particularly the direction of the economy and the viability of large federally funded social programs. Welfare reform, nationalized health care, campaign finance reform, and the reduction of the federal deficit were hotly debated in the 1990s. Many of the federal programs initiated under the Great Society of the 1960s were sharply curtailed or eliminated. The issue of health care reform was debated but left largely unresolved, as the cost of medical insurance and prescription drugs skyrocketed. A technology boom, driven by the commercialization of Cold War military technologies such as computers and wireless communications, led to relative economic prosperity and lower federal deficits in the late 1990s.

With positions on key committees that allocated federal money, a caucus to educate and inform Members and the public, and public focus shifting to domestic policy, women in Congress spearheaded a number of successful efforts to pass legislation affecting women, both in the home and in the workplace. In 1978, the Women’s Caucus rallied support for passage of the Pregnancy Discrimination Prohibition Act. The measure outlawed employers from discriminating against women on the basis of pregnancy, childbirth, or related medical conditions and required employers to provide health insurance for pregnant employees. Two measures—the Family Support Act of 1988 and the Child Support Recovery Act of 1992—implemented stricter procedures for enforcing child support and stiffened the penalties for delinquent parents. The Family Support Act of 1988 also extended childcare and medical benefits for families that had recently stopped receiving government assistance. In 1988, Congress passed the Women’s Business Ownership Act, which created a program targeting service-related businesses owned by women and helped guarantee commercial bank loans of up to $50,000. This legislation also established the National Women’s Business Council to monitor federal, state, and local programs aimed at helping women-owned businesses.

One of the most heralded pieces of legislation initiated by women in Congress—notably Patricia Schroeder and Marge Roukema—was the Family and Medical Leave Act. Passed by Congress in February 1993, this measure required employers to grant employees up to 12 weeks of unpaid leave each year for a chronic health problem, for the birth or adoption of a child, or for the care of a family member with a serious illness. Some Congresswomen observed afterward that men were quick to take credit for an issue that women had pushed initially and consistently. At the presidential bill signing ceremony, only male Senators and Representatives shared the stage with President Clinton and Vice President Al Gore. Schroeder, who was seated in the second row of the audience, complained that Congresswomen often received no acknowledgment for their contributions to legislation. “Often you see women start the issue, educate on the issue, fight for the issue, and then when it becomes fashionable, men push us aside,” Schroeder observed, “and they get away with it.”²⁹

More major successes followed, however. In 1994, with the help of California Senator Barbara Boxer (who had spearheaded the effort as a House Member in the early 1990s), the Violence Against Women Act (VAWA) passed as part of a major omnibus crime bill. VAWA allocated $1.6 billion to prevent domestic abuse and other violent crimes against women—creating an Office on Violence Against Women in the U.S. Justice Department, disbursing funds for victims of abuse, and educating the public about a scourge that had been missing from the national dialogue.

Through the efforts of the Congressional Caucus for Women’s Issues and the bipartisan work of leading Democratic and Republican women, major legislation was passed that altered research into diseases affecting women. In 1993, Congress passed the National Institutes of Health (NIH) Revitalization Act, which created the Office of Women’s Health Research at NIH. This legislation appropriated funding for research on breast cancer, ovarian cancer, sexually transmitted diseases, and other disorders affecting women. Funding increased over the course of the 1990s, and informational campaigns raised public awareness. For example, in 1997 Congress passed the Stamp Out Breast Cancer Act, introduced by Representative Susan Molinari. The measure authorized the creation of a first-class postage stamp that raised millions of dollars for additional NIH programs.

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Footnotes