THE VFA PIONEER HISTORIES PROJECT
Sen. Barbara Mikulski
“I don’t want women and their families to be left out and left behind. We can fight for them. We will fight for them. They deserve better and I want to give them better.”
Interviewed by Mary Jean Collins, April 2024
MJC: Good morning, Senator. Would you please start by telling us your name and where you were born and when?
BM: My name is Barbara Mikulski. I was born in Baltimore, Maryland, in July of 1936.
MJC: Thank you. Would you describe your family and how it influenced you, especially maybe toward being involved in the Feminist Movement? Just describe your family and your siblings, et cetera, if you would.
BM: I’ve lived in Baltimore, Maryland, all of my life. My mom and dad had a small grocery store in which we were part of our community. It was neighbor helping neighbor. It was an urban village where we knew each other and looked out for each other. My mother and father not only ran an honest business, but would also lend a helping hand if others were having some difficulty.
I went to Catholic schools. I went to the same high school as Nancy Pelosi, the Institute of Notre Dame. There, through both our family and the nuns that taught us, it was really about how to make the world a better place. To be a good person, to do what you could, to light one little candle, then to curse the darkness. Also, with the nuns that taught us, they taught Pelosi and me, to show up, stand up, and speak up. That influenced me very much.
I went into the career of social work. My family was not involved in politics, in fact, growing up, politics was potbellied guys that were part of political machines, smoke-filled rooms. And though women had the right to vote, we didn’t have the right to say anything. I went to social work school to really study advocacy. Because as a social worker, the more that I’ve tried to help the poor, the more I saw that there were very few resources for them.
They were told to pull themselves up by their own bootstrap, but they had neither a boot, and only got the strap. So, advocacy became my career. I worked as a social worker. I worked in the war on poverty. I was a foot soldier in Baltimore’s civil rights movement. After Dr. Martin Luther King and Bobby Kennedy were killed, I would say that 1968, until 9/11, was the worst public year of my life.
I thought about going to get a doctorate so that I could be ready when we had elected a Democrat in ’72, but along the way, I was invited to come to a church because the powers that be were putting a 16-lane highway through Baltimore’s neighborhoods. The older urban ethnic neighborhoods like the Polish community, the Little Italy, et cetera.
Historic neighborhoods like Federal Hill, and the very first Black homeownership neighborhood in Baltimore, Rosemont. It was all part of that Robert Moses strategy of tear it down. Attacking particularly working-class communities and communities of color. Later on, of course, as you know, the Moses strategy proved to be quite racist, in its underpinning.
I got into the highway fight. And the highway fight then took me, I got tired of knocking on doors to be heard and I decided to open doors so everyone could be heard, and ran for city council. Everybody laughed. They said, “No woman’s going to win.” This was 1971. “No woman can win.” No one who wasn’t part of the political machine could win, and certainly no one who had been active in the war on poverty or civil rights politics.
But you know, while they laughed, I went door to door, put together groups of coalitions based on mutual need and mutual interest and mutual respect, and promised that I would always listen to the people, that the best ideas would come from the people.
Well, I beat the machine, and that’s how I got into politics. I still call myself a social worker, but when you’re in politics and you’re a Councilwoman, a Congresswoman, or a United States Senator, like I’ve had the honor to be, that’s called social work with power.
MJC: I like that. That’s social work plus. That’s very good. So, you got into the city council out of the fight for the highway. Did you win the fight for the highway?
BM: We won the fight for the highway. It was both a legislative and legal victory. You know, behind every me, there was a whole lot of we. And behind the we, I tried to stand with the we, and that’s how we won. No one ever wins a victory by themselves, whether it’s the women’s movement or any great social movement. It is the power of one being connected to the power of the other, where we claim our power and speak to empower others.
MJC: So that was the very early women’s movement. Were they involved in your first campaign? Were other women [involved]?
BM: No. To talk about the history of it all, really, it was from, I would say, 1970 to 1973. A lot of efforts and organizations were being born. While I was part of the Urban Ethnic Reform Movement, to save our cities without Blacks and Whites being pitted against each other for crumbs when we wanted a whole new bakery, other groups were being formed.
The National Women’s Political Caucus was being formed. Ms. Magazine came to the forefront, out of that came NOW, of which you have been such an active member, and so on. Those groups were just being formed.
When I was in the Baltimore City Council, the way I got involved in the women’s movement – because there wasn’t like a sense of a movement, there were sprouting’s from people who were claiming power in individual efforts to help women – a group of women came to see me in Baltimore City Council to talk about how rape victims were taken care of.
In Baltimore, in 1971, if a woman was raped, she was taken to a police station, a designated one on Pine Street, and had to wait for an OB/GYN doctor to come to see her. When that doctor came, it was not to treat her, to console her, to help her get the resources and help she needed, but to gather evidence. So, she was doubly mistreated by both the attacker and then by the very system itself.
Well, because we’ve always had good men supporting us; there have been men who’ve been allies, men of quality will always support we women as we seek equality but here we were, seeking justice, and fair treatment, and good treatment. With the concurrence of the President of the City Council, Mr. Wally Orlinsky, we bypassed the old boy committee structure and established the Rape Task Force, which he made me chair of.
And again, we brought everyone to the table. Advocates, the police officers, the medical profession, those experiencing law and forensics and evidence gathering. Out of that, we came up with a whole new system for treating rape victims, where you would go to one of three designated hospitals, there would be a nurse trained in forensics to gather the evidence, but at that hospital, you would also receive the treatment and the additional trauma referrals that you needed. That’s how I became involved in one of the first big issues for the women’s movement as a Baltimore City Councilwoman.
MJC: That’s excellent. That’s an excellent piece of history and shaped policy for the future. Appreciate that.
BM: Well, you know what? When we women are elected, we not only make history, but we’re out to change history. We want to change the history of the way women are, and the way women are treated. My other effort was on the National Democratic Committee under Bob Strauss. He appointed me to be head of delegate selection for the 1972 Convention because women were so underrepresented.
It was people like Abzug and Steinem and so on, who had fought at the ’68 Convention for greater representation of women. I went to the very first women’s convention held in 100 years in Texas. It was in 1973. It was the first time that we had gathered, that we were going to claim our power, that we established the National Women’s Political Caucus.
We got the leadership by Sissy Farenthold, who ran for governor. There were people there like Anne Richards and myself and Bella and the great women who emerged. And so, while I was in the city council from 1971 to 1976, these organizations were being born. And in Baltimore, I did the Rape Task Force.
The other thing that was interesting, and scholars might be surprised, back when we had newspapers; remember when you had a newspaper, an actual entity you held in your hand? There were Help Wanted columns, but they were gender segregated. There were guy jobs and girl jobs. So we were in a pink ghetto, segregated and red-lined. Okay?
I helped lead the public relations fight to get that changed so that there were just ads in the paper for jobs, and the best qualified should get the job, and not decided on the basis of your gender. That began my work on equal pay for equal work.
In 1976, Paul Sarbanes, who was then my congressman, ran for the United States Senate. I ran for a congressional seat, and won. Well, that was the wave of women coming into Congress. I joined such esteemed women. I was so excited. There was Shirley Chisholm, there was Pat Schroeder, there was Yvonne Brathwaite Burke. There was Peggy Heckler.
And along there, there were Democrats and Republicans. Republican women like Peg Heckler and Olympia Snow and others. And great Democratic women like Liz Holtzman, Pat, Cardiss Collins. I could go through this honor roll. We formed a Congressional Women’s Caucus, and that caucus really worked on issues related to economic empowerment, women’s health, and we passed the ERA extension.
MJC: So, you were very instrumental in pulling the women from both sides of the aisle together. Can you talk about that collaboration in a little more detail, and how that worked and what the response was?
BM: Well, in the House, it was very different than the Senate. I’ll talk about the Senate, where I spent 30 years, in a minute. But in the House, under the leadership of Liz Holtzman and Pat Schroeder, Peg Heckler, other Republican women like Olympia Snow, we formed a group. And then we formed a caucus in which we would advocate. We had the support, of course, of the first lady, Rosalind Carter, in 1976. We looked at where we were, and we saw there were so many laws that discriminated against us. One, economically.
First of all, women couldn’t get credit in their own name. Even if you had a husband where you earned more than he did, or a dad where you had, again, higher earnings, they needed to sign for you if you wanted to get credit or buy a home or whatever. So, we took that economic empowerment issue on.
Second, we saw that we were being discriminated against in Social Security. There was no recognition of being at home as a homemaker. Everybody said, “Oh, the little woman who loves being at home.” Well, you might be at home, but you weren’t going to get any Social Security. So again, we focused on pension reform.
Other issues came to the floor, one of which was with family and medical leave. And again, many of our ideas came from advocacy groups. The Women’s Law Center, the National Center for Women and Families; Judy Lichtman and Marsha Greenberg were pioneers. So, there were women on the inside, and women on the outside, but very few women in the United States Senate.
So, when Senator McC. Mathias retired, I decided to run for his open seat and ran for the United States Senate. I had a very spirited primary against two excellent Democratic men, Governor Harry Hughes and Congressman Michael Barnes. The first thing the Gateway Pundits were saying is, “She doesn’t look the part. She just doesn’t look the part.” Well, I wanted to prove this is what the part looked like.
Other groups came to my assistance. I’m going to do a shout out for EMILY’s List. There were groups that helped us win, and then there were groups that helped us govern with ideas and research and recommendations. And Again, the women’s advocacy community, whether they were in politics or policy or both, came to the floor. EMILY’s list was started by Ellen Malcolm and a group of women in the basement of her home. To raise early money, it’s like yeast, it’ll raise you more dough.
I won’t go through their way that you participate, but they raised the money for me to be able to take my very first poll. That poll showed that I was going to be the winner. It really showed that I had far more traction than “those who looked the part” had, because people believed that I would more than play the part, I would be the part. Work to be a spirited United States Senator, always honoring and respecting my oath to the Constitution, being a strong voice. Not only the Senator from Maryland, but the Senator for Maryland. And I was going to make sure that voices that were left out, or marginalized, were always at my table.
MJC: Were you the first woman Senator on the Democratic side?
BM: I was the first Democratic woman elected in her own right. Meaning that I was not appointed because of the death of my husband, or the absence of another senator. So, I was the first Democratic woman elected in her own right.
When I came to the Senate and was sworn in, in January of 1987, there was only one other woman there. Senator Nancy Kassebaum of Kansas. A wonderful, wonderful senator from Kansas. We established an excellent relationship. We worked together on many issues, particularly related to Planned Parenthood, the economic empowerment of women, and she was a wonderful ally. But no other women were elected.
Then, in 1992, when there was a hearing before the Senate Judiciary Committee for Clarence Thomas to become a Supreme Court Justice, Anita Hill, who had allegations of sexual harassment in the workplace, came forward. She was not only treated with incredible indignity, harassment, her very persona and credentials were called in, but she was humiliated.
She was humiliated by a committee of the United States Senate. Well, women revolted. Women just were outraged because you see, these hearings were publicized. So, while the boys strutted and plumed their feathers and went after her; the Republican guys, thinking it was really fun to raise vulgar and salacious issues, the women fought back.
Our message was, “Don’t get mad, get elected. Don’t get mad, get elected.” Then was coined, “The Year of the Woman.” Well, I didn’t particularly go for that. We get a year, oh wow, like the year of the caribou, or the year of the mushroom, or something like that. We wanted to, again, make history and change history.
Women poured out to the ballot box, and a significant number of women were elected that year and helped Democrats get control of the Senate. We had the unique situation of California making history. They elected two Democratic women, Senator Feinstein and Senator Boxer, both serve with great distinction. And Barb Boxer and I joined the ranks of senators who had served both in the House and the Senate.
So, When they came, I held a power workshop. You see, during those six years, while I was hoping for more women to come to the Senate, I just took some notes on what it took to be a successful senator. You see, great guys welcomed me to the Senate. There were men who really welcomed me.
I’m going to do a shout out for my own colleague, Senator Paul Sarbanes, because he not only helped me get on the right committees and get off to the right start, but he showed me these invisible halls of power that exist and that behind every smoke-filled room, there was another way to have a conversation.
I took notes and when the women came, I said, “I was having a power workshop.” And the press said, “What do you mean? Are you having a tea?” I said, “No, we’re having a power workshop. We are here to claim our power so that we can empower others.”
So, when the women came, I had this workshop on, How to get on the Right Committee, Suggestions for Staff Hiring, How to Make a Reputation in the Senate, and some other things and it all went rocking. Republican women came to the Senate. People like, again, Olympia Snow, my dear friend from the House, and, of course, Senator Nancy Kassebaum, and then Kay Bailey Hutchison, from Texas.
Now, this goes to a story that I tell my students, because I’m a professor of public policy now here at Hopkins; Don’t always judge. So, Senator Hutchison gets elected, and I get this call when I’m having a meeting. My staff says, “Senator Hutchison is on the phone.”
And I said, “Please tell her I’ll call her back.” And my staff said, “Eww, why are we going to be talking with her? She’s a Republican, from Texas, and they’re not always on our side.” And I said, “She’s another senator. Protocol is such that we’re going to call her back. There are very few women. You better believe I’m definitely calling Senator Hutchison back.”
Senator Hutchison had an idea on economic empowerment and she wanted to reach out to me because I was the senior Democratic woman. Actually, I was the senior woman. I called her back and she said, “I have an idea on economic empowerment related to pensions I’d like to share with you.” And I said, “Tell me about it.”
And she said, “Well, with the IRA pension fund, if you’re in the marketplace, women and men can give the same amount of money as a contribution. But if you’re a woman at home, as a full-time homemaker or an entrepreneur, you can only give half. So even though it’s your money and your decision, you are not allowed to give full payment. And isn’t the worth of a homemaker or an entrepreneur at home worth as much?”
So, we went out to dinner to talk strategy and tactics. I said, “I’m all in.” Oh my god! Mikulski and Hutchison? Republican and Democrat? You know, Kay’s from Texas and Barb you know, Maryland’s pretty blue, Maryland’s pretty blue.
So, Senator Hutchison and I talked legislation, both content, strategy. We decided, yes, we were going to go for it, and I definitely was supporting her idea. I thought it was a terrific idea to have IRA parity. We had such a good time at the dinner. We got to know each other a bit personally, where we grew up, what she faced coming out of law school. Even though top in her class, she was always referred to as “That cheerleader,” never the great legal ability.
We had such a good time, we said, “Why don’t we invite the other women?” I reached out to the Democrats, she reached out to the few Republicans we had, and that’s how we began those famous dinners that the women of the Senate had, where we gathered once a month. And we had these three rules, “No staff, no memos, no leaks. No staff, no memos, no leaks.”
At our very first meeting because we differed so much from policy issues; some of us were pro-choice, some of us were not. Some of us were for balanced budget, some of us were not. Some people were for term limits, some of us weren’t. Some of us were for paid family medical leave, some were not. We had a variety of issues, so we decided we would not be a caucus, we would be a force.
But our first force, because this was during the dawn of prickly politics; prickly politics was coming with the dawn of Gingrich in the house, that we would, among ourselves as we debated, we would be a zone of stability. We would be characterized by our debates with each other based on intellectual rigor, explicit mutual respect, protocol, duking it out with the amendments, and let it be. And then we also agreed that we wanted more money for breast cancer funding, and we would be advocates for more money for breast cancer research.
That’s how the women in the Senate dinners got started and it stood the test of time. It was one of the few gatherings of the bipartisans. Relationships were formed, treasured relationships, and we did many, many good things – one of which was establish the Office of Women’s Health at NIH.
Do you know women were systematically excluded from protocols at NIH? Their excuse was fabricated. There were insiders, like Dr. Ruth Kirschstein, who fought but really, again, it was a bipartisan effort. Started in the House, with Connie Morella, Republican from Maryland, Pat Schroeder, others. And one day we all went to NIH to demand, why women weren’t included? We were tired of press conferences and reports and letters.
And that was the day they appointed Bernadine Healy, then we in Congress, worked with Bernadine Healey. We established the Office of Women’s Health and got women in the protocols at NIH. And Dr. Vivian Pinn was established; a distinguished woman of color, a professor at Howard University in Cardiology, brilliant researcher, became the head of it.
So, you see, those are the kinds of things we did. We did it because we were a we. We did it because we were able to work across the aisle. I’m so glad that Kay called me that day, and I’m glad I called her back, because we didn’t judge each other as red or blue. We judged each other as women, who wanted to help other women be able to have some opportunity to save for their own pensions with their own money. And then from there, we worked to save lives to do that.
We worked together, and this is one of the things I’m very proud of, again with the men; Senator Tom Harkin and Arlen Specter, a Republican from Pennsylvania, they shared the funding for NIH on the Appropriations Committee.
Dr. Healy, head of NIH then, wanted to do her famous study on hormone research. She called and said, “I really would like to do this study, but it’s longitudinal and it’ll be pretty expensive. Can you help me?” I said, “Well, first of all, doctor, we never want to earmark science. We don’t want politicians earmarking. But let me ask the senators.”
Well, it was Senator Harkin and Specter, who recommended we establish a pot of money at the discretion of the director, for promising research. That’s when Dr. Healey picked up and did the famous hormone study.
But let me flash forward on this story. The other senators, we all worked together. Dr. Healey ultimately went on to other career opportunities, but unfortunately, she developed brain cancer. One of the last conversations that I had with her, and I get very touched when I say this because we did try to stay a bit in touch, was about the New York Times reporting that her famous longitudinal study had resulted in change in medical practice on how hormones were given to women in postmenopausal times, and it had reduced breast cancer by 15%. It was the first big breakthrough. Reduced breast cancer by 15%.
Dr. Healey had studied here at Hopkins, and had studied here at Cardiology. It’s one of the little bonds that we had. And I said, “Well, here at Hopkins, at the School of Public Health, Bernadine, they say “They saved lives a million at a time.” That’s what the women in the Senate did. Because of your recommendation, the women got together and worked with great guys in the United States Senate, and got the money for you to make the appropriate clinical research decisions. That research now has saved over a million lives. So, When they say, “Well, what did you all do?” Well, it takes a lot of, again, we, to be able to get the job done. And none of us could have done it without the other.
MJC: It’s an amazing story. Tell me more about your life in the Senate. Are there more things in the Senate that you want to talk about as accomplishments in addition to this wonderful collaboration with the women?
BM: Well, first of all, I think one, is the process. I think the way we would do our power workshops. At the beginning of each term for any of the new women who came, we would do the power workshops. We continued to have our monthly dinners, I think, all the way through certainly the Obama years and I believe that they still continue under the leadership of senators, Murray and Collins.
But my life in the Senate, you know, I will come back to again, until 1992, there were only two women. So, we got along very, very well. But I want to talk about men as mentors and men as allies. There were men there that really helped me get started. Again, my shout out for Senator Paul Sarbanes, but then there were liberal guys that I had worked with when I was in the House. Senator Kennedy and Senator Dodd, in particular, were very helpful. They were on the Health Education Committee, and then we could work together on issues.
Senator Dodd was taking the lead on both daycare and family and medical leave. I was an adamant supporter of that, and we worked together and we were able to help move that legislation. Senator Kennedy certainly encouraged me to pursue the whole women’s health agenda, to go out there at NIH, to raise hell. To not only be at the table, but pound the table, and come back there with the ideas and the legislation. When we wanted to establish the Office of Women’s Health, when we wanted to move on more funding for breast cancer research, we had these great guys helping.
I also want to talk about an alliance, a bicameral alliance, and that’s with congressman Henry Waxman. What a champion for women over in the House. He was on the Energy and Commerce Committee. That’s where I was, serving with great guys like John Dingle, Al Gore, my seatmate; Al came to the Senate two years ahead of me. Anyway, we kept those relationships. Henry Waxman was an enormous champion of funding for screening for breast and cervical cancer.
Did you know there was no federal program? Women would have a lump on their breast, they would go in for some examination, they would take a tumor test, and then they would do a mastectomy. Well, the advocates were coming to see me and others. They were of course, coming to see the women and Henry and the house, and congressman Waxman led the way in the house for the breast and cervical cancer screening. I picked it up in the Senate. And again, Senator Kennedy was absolutely on my side to move this legislation.
One of the surprises in terms of helping hands was the men of World War II. When I got to the Senate, again, I had my own colleague. There were men that I’d worked with in liberal advocacy politics, like Kennedy and Dodd. Gore had gone on two years ahead of me, we’d been seatmates. So, I had swell guys that I knew and were helpful. But I didn’t know how the older generation would be.
Well, the older generation split. Those who were unknowing and a bit skittish but those who jumped right in, and the men of World War II. I’m going to speak again across the aisle. First of all, Senator Dan Inouye. I got on the Appropriations Committee, he welcomed me, he helped me know the ropes. He was just fantastic. And on the other side of the aisle was Ted Stevens, again, a World War II guy who could be pretty puckish at times. I think it’s because those men had seen such tough things.
I remember I was working on legislation for people who lost everything when one of their spouses went into long term care. The very cruel rules of government were such that you had to spend down your life savings and even put a mortgage on your family home or your family farm to pay the bill. I believe in family responsibility, but not family bankruptcy, based on the cruel, cruel, cruel rules of government itself.
I had legislation called the Spousal Impoverishment Act that would protect against the loss of home and the loss of everything, even though you had to take responsibility. I introduced the legislation and was waiting to be able to move it. The Senate, as you know, is not necessarily a peppy organization, sometimes moves a bit slow.
There was a bill on the floor that was being run by the chairman of the Finance Committee; because he was in the Finance Committee, by Senator Lloyd Benson and the vice chair, Republican, Senator Robert Dole. These were both patriarchs of the Senate. And again, World War II got Senator Dole himself, the permanent wounds of war.
So, I pulled a fast maneuver that my staff and I pulled, to get my amendment up, and was all set to debate on the floor, my notebooks, and Senator Benson said, “I asked if there would be a quorum call”, which meant everything stopped. And he (Senator Benson) went like this, and pointed to the coat room, a little quiet room. He said, “Senator, could we talk?”
And I went back and he said, “What the hell are you doing?” And I talked about my amendment, and I was fighting for the people who were losing everything, and I knew he would approve and whatever. He said, “There’s only one chairman at a time, Barbara. I’m it. Don’t pull a fast one. Don’t pull a fast one. Now, let me think about this. Let me go talk to Bob.” Meaning Senator Dole.
So, I sat there like a schoolgirl. I was really scared. I mean, it’s not like he could do it, but you didn’t want the distinguished, Roy Benson, yelling at you. So, Benson comes in, Bob Dole is standing behind him, and I thought, “I think I know what Judgment Day feels like.” I said, “Yes, senators,” and they said, “Look, we admire the fact that you’re not only doing your campaign promise, but that you are really meeting a real need. And we also know that you’re new and you want to get going. But we’re the chairmen, and we can’t take this up now. But we promise you, both of us here, that we will hold a hearing on your bill and do our best to move it on the floor. How does that sound?”
I got a lesson in conflict resolution, civility, and by that time, you know haha – I was willing to surrender, and true to their word, we held a hearing. That legislation did pass, and with their help and their assistance, it pretty much passed unanimously. I owe a debt of gratitude to them for not only moving this significant legislation, that nothing more has been done for over 30 years, but also teaching a very young ambitious senator, a lesson or two on civility, collegiality, and how to get things done.
MJC: That is an excellent story. And we all are in gratitude for the effort that was made and for the changes in the law. Thank you. So, more stories that you want to tell us about the Senate experience?
BM: Well, what other questions you have?
MJC: I wanted to ask you what you think the difference, and I think you’ve answered this to some extent, but I’ll ask it explicitly, what difference has it meant to have women in the Senate and the House?
BM: I think it makes a tremendous difference. Again, I can’t say enough nice things about being with Senator Kassebaum, but to have more women come, different views, different states and different prerogatives, we worked together on a variety of things. First of all, one of the things that we realized, because the movement of the ERA was going so very slowly, we were going to have to do this one law at a time.
So, we looked at the economic empowerment of women, and we looked at also women’s health care. Again, with the women, both on the appropriate committees and then working with advocacy groups, we came up with just a variety of issues. Not only were we excluded from clinical trials at NIH, but there were a whole host of other things that were pertaining to us in health care.
Now, this goes to us working with outside advocacy groups. Though much is made that the Senate has these large staffs, we represent whole states. Remember, like Boxer and Feinstein, were representing 40 million people. I was representing a mid-size state, several million. So, you need your staff for your own policy work to represent your state and be on your committees, and also your constituent service.
So, we need advisors, and the advocacy groups were just fantastic. And again, I do want to talk about the role that the best ideas come from the people. There was the National Women’s Law Center, and then there was the National Partnership for Families with Judy Lichtman’s group, and they helped do a lot of research for us that brought issues to our attention.
Now, what were some of the big ones as we worked on health care and culminated in my amendments on Obamacare? One of which was that women pay twice as much for health insurance than their male counterpart of equal age and health status. Why? Because you’re childbearing. Well, some of us passed that age a long time ago, and we’re still paying double. Well, then you have “women’s issues.” Well, what does that mean? So, we were paying twice as much.
Then the punitive practices of insurance companies through their pre-existing conditions were defining many issues that affect women in a punitive way. It was Judy Lichtman’s group, again, and Marsha.
Their work showed that 11 states defined rape as a pre-existing condition to deny health insurance, because the women are going to need extra health care and mental health. You bet you. And we all should be unhappy about what had happened, but more than willing to contribute. So that’s why, when we were working on advancing the health agenda of President Obama, which was a superb one, that we worked on correcting these imbalances.
Again, we held hearings in the Senate, and it was because there were a substantial number of women saying to Senator Kennedy; he was quite sick at the time, Senator Dodd, Senator Stabenow, but we each took a part of it, and were working on it. So, when Obamacare came up for its final votes, I brought up the women’s health amendment that I had worked on with all of the women. It ended the punitive practices and it ensured certain screening, and it ensured access to birth control, free, no copay, and so on.
And when I brought my amendment up, and this goes to the zone of civility, Senator Lisa Murkowski, a good pal from Alaska, where people always got us confused, Murkowski and Mikulski. People would call me and say, “Why do I want to drill for oil in Alaska?” And they would be yelling at her, “Why did she vote against term limits?”
Senator Murkowski and I agreed on the same goals, but we had different means. We each, over the course of the day, offered approximately 19 amendments. Mine prevailed. But at the end of the day, other senators said it was the most enlightening, the most instructive, the most cordial, and it followed a regular order. It was sense and sensibility, not exactly the way Jane Austin saw it, but certainly the way Lucretia Mott saw it, and Susan B. Anthony and Harriet Tubman.
So having women there, I think certainly made a difference in Obamacare. To be sure that the wrongs that were really gender-directed, many of them were corrected, and also greater access to health care. Now, of course, comes the big battles. One of the questions my students ask is, “What have you learned?” That’s a good question.
And I say, “You know, now that I have latitude, I’ve learned you’ve got to keep the same attitude. You’ve always got to be willing to be an advocate. But just because you have latitude, keep the same attitude.”
But what so surprised me was that the battles that we fought 50 years ago, we fight today. I find it extraordinarily unbelievable that we are now fighting, because of the elimination, fighting to save a women’s right to have an abortion, or that she determines the course of her own health care. Where the punitive, heavy hand of government could indict her, criminalized doctors, criminalize pregnant women.
So, this fight now, 50 years later, we’re now back in it. And there are so many other issues that are out there to erode women’s rights. One of my most passionate ones is having fought for the Lilly Ledbetter Bill, the famous Equal Pay for Equal or Comparable Work.
Well, you would think that we were asking for something or other. We were looking for gold plated something or other. We were looking for fairness, justice, and in pay, equality. And that battle continues. We still have not finished that. There are all kinds of ways of dodging and whatever, so there are fights to be continued. But unfortunately, in many instances, they’re the same fights.
What I say to the young women is, “It’s now your time. It’s now your turn.” Learn the lessons that we fought for. But it’s a new world. It’s new technologies. There are new ways of being an advocate. Get out there and do it. If you’re an extrovert, get out there and talk and walk and strategize. If you’re an introvert and say, “Well, I’m too shy to go on a march,” work on the policy papers, work on the research, join a campaign for an excellent candidate, do your phone banking. In other words, in the words of Senator Gillibrand, “Get off the benches and get into those trenches.”
MJC: I want to ask something slightly related to this, which is what role you played in the Democratic Party and in changing the Democratic Party over the period of time that you were active as a candidate and an elected official.
BM: Well, first, the answer is, I think, again, it’s a whole lot of “we.” And again, I want to really talk about the great women that were both my predecessors and so on; some of us have been inducted in the Women’s Hall of Fame. I had a chance to talk, and I’ll get back to the specifics of the party in a minute, but there are certain characteristics of being the “firstie”, whether you’re Barb Mikulski in the Senate, whether you’re Sally Ride going into space, that if you’re the first, you want to be the first of many.
And one of the things that the women of the Senate, and even when we were in Congress, we wanted to be sure that though we were the “firsties,” we would not be the “onlies.” So, we did what we could within the party to create mechanisms and so on, for people to be able to run, but also to be able to win. Which is financing for these candidates, and then also to build the pipeline, not only for federal and statewide office but also for the local offices of the state rep, the way I got my start in city council. And so, again, it was the “firsties” who always said we didn’t want to be the “onlies.”
Now, what we did in the Democratic Party, we certainly, in delegate selection, pushed very strongly for equity in gender distribution and for a greater democratization of who would get to go to the convention, and that we would not all be under the lockstep of the chairman. So, we worked on presidential party selection, we also worked on establishing groups within our own party, like within the Senate, that there would be a pot of money for women to be able to run for the Senate.
Many of us also raised money for a group called Emerge. Started in California and it’s based in different states, to train women on how to run a campaign. I get people calling me saying, “I’m going to run for office. Can you help me? Will you endorse me?” I said, “Well, have you worked in a campaign?” “No.” “Do you know your member, who is your state? What office you’re going to run for?” “I’m not sure.”
So, you see, many people are eager to serve, and I’m not making fun of that. I’m not being snarky. What I’m saying is, there’s such an unknowing. And my encouragement is, get active in a campaign now, and Emerge and EMILY’s List, both groups for Democratic women, run these training programs, which I think are just terrific, because it helps you either become a candidate, or to be very effective if you work in a candidate’s campaign.
Then, of course, there’s the raising of the money, and EMILY’s List is one, but I’m very grateful for the advocacy groups that had PACS. Certainly, I was a beneficiary of NARAL and other pro-choice groups. And I tell you, it’s a help, because usually when women are campaigning and are asking for contributions, zeros drop off. They give the guys a thousand, you get a hundred.
MJC: Interesting. So that makes your job even harder.
BM: A lot of that has changed, and it’s because of all that’s gone before, and also our success. And they also see that we’re very good legislators. Very, very good legislators. And it’s interesting, many have been chosen to be diplomats when they’ve left federal office. I’m not sure if it was President Reagan or President Bush, appointed Congresswoman Heckler to be our ambassador to Ireland. Lindy Boggs, our ambassador to the Vatican.
I could go through some of the others; but the other thing is, I would say to young people, “Be engaged.” If politics is not your thing, just know politics will become your thing, because all policy issues of great impact go through the world of politics. Get involved in a group that you believe in. If you want to do something about housing, there’s Habitat for Humanity. If you want to make sure we have a constitutional representation, the ACLU certainly could use you. I mean, get out there and be civically engaged, but also really get involved in campaigns and consider running, for yourself. But take that training program.
MJC: So, this might be obvious, but I’m going to ask it. How do you think the women’s movement and being involved with women’s rights issues changed your life?
BM: Well, I think my life is better because of the women’s movement, when we look at the issues that we won on, and fought for. But on a personal note, I want to talk about the friendships and the camaraderie. I treasure to this day, my relationships with my colleagues in the Congress. Those that I served with so very many years ago. Some who passed on, I’m still in touch with their families, like Geraldine Ferrero’s family, Congresswoman Barbara Kennelly, to name a few.
And also, you felt you were part of a group that was bigger than yourself, and you were taking on some of the biggest fights in the world that would determine how to improve lives and livelihoods. How it was going to improve women’s health, and maybe save them from breast cancer.
You know, I was looking at the list of people I’d gone to college with; I went to a small Catholic woman’s college, and over 80% of my classmates have passed away. I say that not for melancholy almanac data, but the fact that they were of the generation, my generation, before mammograms, and mammogram quality standards, had come really into being. We didn’t hear that much about it.
When we did the cervical cancer screening that we worked with, with Congressman Waxman and the House Energy and Commerce Committee on Women, was the fact that there were so many false positives or false negatives. We did laboratory reform. We did funding for screening. And of course, we ended a lot of the discriminatory practices just to get health insurance in the first place.
So, to be part of a group, initially of women but not women only, to really fight, to save lives a million at a time, you know, that’s a pretty good job. But again, I would say that the women’s movement was just a wonderful place to be for feeling a sense of purpose. If you want to live a purpose-driven life, to really be advocating for equal pay, no discrimination in cost for health care, to improve research in breast cancer, Oh, my gosh. I think it’s just the greatest thing that you can do. And I’m glad that I had a chance to do it.
When people say, “It’s been an honor and a privilege,” it really has. It’s been an honor and a privilege to serve in public office. And it’s been an honor and a privilege to work in coalition, in alliance, and in friendship, and in solidarity, with all of the people. From the advocates, to the people who showed up at town hall meetings, all the way through to my colleagues in the United States Senate and the White House.
MJC: Do you want to talk a little about after you left the Congress? You were working as a teacher, and do you want to talk a little bit about what your contribution continues to be?
BM: When I left the United States Senate, I became a professor of public policy here at Johns Hopkins University. I was on two boards; the NDI, the National Democratic Institute, that had been chaired by the beloved and esteemed Madeleine Albright, which again was to expand democracy around the world, and also for disempowered or marginalized groups. I worked on that board for five years.
And in Baltimore, I joined the board of the Community Foundation, which works to meet the unmet needs in Baltimore through donor-advised funds. Both of those took a lot of time, but I was involved, again, in community building, both here and around the country, and also supporting the good groups like Emerge. And also, we have quite an up-and-coming pipeline of Democratic women running for office in Maryland that I support.
MJC: Is there anything I failed to ask that you would like to add before we end?
BM: I think we’ve really covered it. I would just say to those who look back on our lives, the fight continues. The fight continues. That’s what’s so surprising to me. When we had Roe vs Wade, I thought that was done. I thought it would never change. Well, it did. And now we’re fighting state after state. When we passed the law on opening up the courthouse door for Lilly Ledbetter, we thought we would get equal pay for equal work. Well, we didn’t. We go back. When we look at women’s health care, those insurance companies are back with those pre-existing conditions, looking around for every way they can sneak in. I’m not against the insurance companies, but I don’t want them against me either. So how about let’s recognize who we are and what we are.
I would say that one of the greatest satisfactions in life is to be part of a cause that you believe in and to support advocates of the like-minded cause. Whether they’re running for office or whether they’re executives in NGOs or profit-making enterprises. Each and every one of us can make a difference in somebody’s life. But when we work together, we can make change.