I interviewed hundreds of people for my 2020 biography of Nancy Pelosi, but there was one interview that stuck with me more than all the others: my conversation with former Rep. Pat Schroeder, the trailblazing Colorado congresswoman. Upon the news of her death this week, I went back to my notes from that interview to write a brief remembrance for TIME.
The most memorable story Schroeder told me involved her work on the Equal Credit Opportunity Act, which allowed women to get credit cards in their own name, without a male co-signer, for the first time in 1974. (1974!) Several years later, Schroeder was still getting letters from women saying they were being turned down when they applied for credit cards. “We were so proud of ourselves, sitting in the women’s lounge, but everyone was writing to us telling us nothing had changed,” she recalled. “So we got someone from the Fed, which was supposed to implement the legislation, to come over and meet with us. And he said, ‘You just meant for department stores and shopping, right?’” He hadn’t bothered to enforce the law, because he couldn’t see why it was needed. It was a lesson in sexism, but also in the insufficiency of simply making policy to change people’s lives: you need implementation and follow-up, too.
That’s just one of the many great stories she told me. Here’s another:
Another time, Schroeder heard from her constituents at Lowry Air Force Base that women officers were expected to socialize at the Officers’ Club, where the entertainment frequently consisted of topless go-go dancers. “I went to the secretary of the Air Force, who was the first woman secretary, and she said the same thing as me: ‘They what?’” Schroeder recalled. “‘I’ll fix that.’ She sent a memo and she sent me a copy, and we thought, that is the end of that in all officers’ clubs on air bases. Six months later, the women tell me it’s still happening. And I get ahold of the secretary, and she calls the officers who were supposed to distribute the memo. And they said, ‘We never sent that out. We thought you were kidding.’”
Read the piece here.