Barron: What happened to the feminist movement

The icon who died was Patricia Schroeder, the first woman elected to Congress from Colorado. The year was 1972 and Nixon had just won a landslide election.

Schroeder, a liberal Democrat, was one of only 14 women in Congress at the time. Many of those women had replaced their dead husbands, according to published accounts.

And according those accounts, she shook things up. She was a political volunteer and a housewife with two children when she was elected.

Smart, sharp-witted and outspoken. she also was a licensed pilot and a Harvard law school graduate.

One of the tributes to Schroeder came from former Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi.

“It was my great personal privilege to serve with Congresswoman Schroeder, whom many of us consider one of the bravest women to ever serve in the halls of Congress.” Pelosi said in a statement.

When she took her seat, Schroeder described Congress as resembling “an overaged frat house.”

Besides being heavily outnumbered by men, she said there also were no women pages, police officers or doorkeepers — “no women at all.”

When congressmen socialized with women, it was not as peers.

Lobbyists would invite the men over for drinks but didn’t invite the women.

Schroeder and other women in congress had difficulty being taken seriously.

In 1987 after fellow Coloradan Gary Hart and Democrat pulled out of the presidential race, Schroeder did some voter testing ad fundraising as a potential presidential candidate.

Four months later she too pulled out of contention during a tearful news conference.

Despite her accomplishments as a pioneer for women’s rights, she received some critics who claimed she set the movement back by displaying so much emotion.

She retired from Congress after 24 years.

What is amazing about this recap is the enormity of the barriers facing women in 1970’s. We forget that.

That was a true in the Wyoming Legislature as well.

Very few of the women in the Wyoming House and Senate of that era were notably outspoken. The few of them that served were left out of a lot of key discussions about bills in the bar at the Hitching Post. That’s where most of the guys were after work.

They also lunched together.

It was an all boys club.

One woman who did speak out like Schroeder was Sen. June Boyle, a Laramie Democrat.

She was a supporter of the women’s council or whatever it was called then. The council is a large group of women from throughout the state established to work on, of course, women’s issues. It also has been one of those programs that gets kicked around in government — the first to get a budget cut in bad times and the last to get more money in good times.

Boyle stormed into the press room boiling one day because the Senate had taken deep cuts in the council’s budget.

She said the state’s motto as the Equality State was a joke because the Legislature would only give “crumbs — crumbs” to women’s groups like the council.

Boyle was probably the most colorfully outspoken of that volatile decade.

Later Sen. Win Hickey, a Cheyenne Democrat, was good at tongue-lashing her male colleagues. When they refused to restore cuts to a social program she supported, Hickey stood up and looked around. “Shame. Shame. Shame.” she said and sat down to silence.

Also later Rep. Nila Murphy of Casper, another Democrat, earned the resentment of the leadership by her persistent goal to provide recordings of the Legislature’s committee of whole debates. Her effort failed.

The women’s rights movement nationally was revitalized in the 1970’s by a new wave of feminists led by Gloria Steinman and with the main goal the ratification of the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA).

Then it sputtered. One reason was a fissure in the leadership groups. But the main one was the rise of the conservative right, exemplified by activist and author Phyllis Shafly who successfully fought ratification of the ERA. (The Wyoming Senate in 1973 voted for the ERA but not enough states followed suit for ratification.)

Nevertheless the women’s rights movement generated a lot of changes in the nation and states and for the future of women.

It still lives today as shown by the young women campaigning against anti-abortion bills in the states.