WASHINGTON (AP) \u2014 Former U.S. Rep. Pat Schroeder, a pioneer for women\u2019s and family rights in Congress, has died. She was 82.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Schroeder’s former press secretary, Andrea Camp, said Schroeder suffered a stroke recently and died Monday night at a hospital in Celebration, Florida, the city where she had been residing in recent years.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Her unorthodox methods cost her important committee posts, but Schroeder said she wasn\u2019t willing to join what she called \u201cthe good old boys\u2019 club\u201d just to score political points. Unafraid of embarrassing her congressional colleagues in public, she became an icon for the feminist movement.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Schroeder helped forge several Democratic majorities before deciding in 1997 it was time to leave. Her parting shot in 1998 was a book titled \u201c24 Years of Housework … and the Place is Still a Mess. My Life in Politics,\u2033 which chronicled her frustration with male domination and the slow pace of change in federal institutions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
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 \u201ctears signify compassion, not weakness.\u201d Her heart was not in it, she said, and she thought fundraising was demeaning.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Republicans were livid after Schroeder and others filed an ethics complaint over House Speaker Newt Gingrich\u2019s televised college lecture series, charging that free cable time he received amounted to an illegal gift under House rules. Gingrich became the first speaker reprimanded by Congress. Gingrich said later he regretted not taking Schroeder and her colleagues more seriously.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Earlier, she had blasted Gingrich for suggesting women shouldn\u2019t serve in combat because they could get infections from being in a ditch for 30 days. According to her official House biography, she once told Pentagon officials that if they were women, they would always be pregnant because they never said \u201cno.\u2033<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Asked by one congressman how she could be a mother of two small children and a member of Congress at the same time, she replied, \u201cI have a brain and a uterus, and I use both.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n
It was Schroeder who branded President Ronald Reagan the Teflon president<\/a> for his ability to avoid blame for major policy decisions, and the name stuck.<\/p>\n\n\n\n