Former U.S. Representative Pat Schroeder, a pioneer for women’s and family rights in Congress, passed away Monday night. she was 82

Schroeder’s former press secretary, Andrea Camp, said Schroeder recently suffered a stroke and died at a hospital in Celebration, Florida, the city where she had been staying for the past several years.

For 24 years, Schroeder took on the powerful elite with her rapier wit and antics, shaking up tough government institutions by forcing them to recognize that women played a role in government.

Her unorthodox methods cost her important commission posts, but Schroeder said she wasn’t willing to join what she called “the good old boys’ club” just to score political points. She was not afraid to publicly embarrass her congressional colleagues and became an icon for the feminist movement.

Schroeder was elected to Congress in Colorado in 1972 and became one of its most influential Democrats, winning reelection easily 11 times from her safe Denver district. Despite her seniority, she was never appointed to lead a committee.

Schroeder helped forge several Democratic majorities before deciding in 1997 it was time to leave. Her farewell photo in 1998 was a book titled 24 Years of Housework… and the Place is Still a Mess. My Life in Politics, which chronicled her frustration with male domination and the slow pace of change in federal institutions.

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In 1987, Schroeder tested the waters for president, mounting a fundraiser after fellow Coloradon Gary Hart withdrew from the race. She tearfully announced three months later that she would not run, saying her tears signified compassion, not weakness. Her heart was not in it, she said, and she found fundraising humiliating.

She was the first woman on the House Armed Services Committee, but had to share a seat with Northern California Representative Ron Dellums, the first African American, when committee chair F. Edward Hebert (D-La.) hosted the panel. Schroeder said Hebert thought the committee had no place for a woman or an African American and they were only worth half a seat each.

Republicans were outraged after Schroeder and others filed an ethics complaint about House Speaker Newt Gingrich’s lecture series that aired at the university. The complaint alleged that the free cable time Gingrich received was an illegal gift under house rules. Gingrich became the first speaker reprimanded by Congress, and later said he regretted not taking Schroeder and her colleagues more seriously.

Previously, she had scolded Gingrich for suggesting that women should not serve in combat because they could contract infections from being in a ditch for 30 days. According to her official biography of House, she once told Pentagon officials that if they were women, they would always be pregnant because they never said no.

When asked by a congressman how she can be a mother of two small children and a congressman at the same time, she replied: I have a brain and a uterus, and I use both.

It was Schroeder who called President Ronald Reagan the Teflon President for his ability to avoid blame for major policy decisions, and the name stuck.

One of Schroeder’s greatest victories was the signing into law of a family leave bill in 1993, which provided job protection while caring for a newborn, a sick child, or a parent.

Pat Schroeder paved the way. Every woman in this house is following in her footsteps, said Representative Nita Lowey (DN.Y.), who took over from Schroeder as Democratic chair of the bipartisan congressional caucus on women’s issues.

Schroeder said lawmakers paid too much attention to contributors and special interests. When House Republicans gathered on the steps of the Capitol to celebrate their first 100 days in power in 1994, she and several aides climbed to the building’s dome and put up a 15-foot red banner that read Sold .

As a pilot, Schroeder earned her way through Harvard Law School with her own flight service. Schroeder became a professor at Princeton after leaving Congress, but said politics was in her blood and she would continue to work for candidates she supported.

For a time, she taught a graduate-level course titled The Politics of Poverty. She also led the Assn. from American publishers.

Schroeder continued to work in politics after moving to Florida, going door to door, speaking to groups and mentoring candidates. She was politically active on issues and candidates across the country and campaigned for Hillary Clinton in 2016. She served on the board of the Marguerite Casey Foundation, among others.

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Schroeder was born in Portland, Oregon, on July 30, 1940. She graduated from the University of Minnesota before receiving her law degree in 1964. From 1964 to 1966, she was a field attorney for the National Labor Relations Board.

She is survived by her husband, James W. Schroeder, whom she married in 1962. Also surviving are their two children, Scott and Jamie, and her brother, Mike Scott, as well as four grandchildren.