THE VFA PIONEER HISTORIES PROJECT
Pat Reuss
“Everyone has value and deserves dignity, equality and justice.”
Organizer, Lobbyist, Activist. Instrumental in passing and protecting civil rights and equal justice laws. Policy advisor to the National Organization for Women (NOW) and the National Task Force to End Sexual and Domestic Violence. Officer in Virginia NOW, serving as the PAC coordinator. Worked as the Senior Policy Analyst for the National Organization for Women, directed the Washington, D.C. office of the NOW Legal Defense and Education Fund (now Legal Momentum), and spent her first decade in the District as the Legislative Director for the Women’s Equity Action League (WEAL), beginning in 1979. A major force behind the 1994 passage of the Violence Against Women Act (VAWA) and led the effort to make the 1996 welfare bill less punitive to women. Worked tirelessly to protect Title IX, reproductive rights and economic justice. Led coalitions that passed pension reform, COBRA, improvements in childcare and the law that protects women from abortion clinic violence (FACE).
Interviewed by Mary Jean Collins, VFA Historian, June 2024
Photo. Pat to the right of Patricia Schroeder.
More About Pat:
- NPR radio interview with Pat Reuss, “Everybody Knows Somebody.”
- Pat is featured in VFA presents a Rare First-Person Account of the Women’s Movement
- Select interviews/panels, Clearinghouse on Women’s Issues’ (CWI)
- #METOO on the Job and in School: Then and Now, Karma Cottman, Executive Director of the DC Coalition Against Domestic Violence; Ruth Glenn, Executive Director of the National Coalition Against Domestic Violence; Pat Reuss, 2017
- Violence Against Women Act, Pat Reuss, Senior Policy Analyst, NOW Legal Defense and Education Fund, 1994
- Violence Against Women, Cynthia Anderson, Director, Abused Persons Program, Montgomery County; Pat Reuss, Public Policy Adviser, Women’s Legal Defense Fund, 1991
- Women in the 98th Congress, Patricia Reuss, Legislative Liaison, Women’s Equity Action League, 1991
- Women’s Legislative Issues, 1988, Patricia Reuss, Legislative Director, WEAL, 1988
- Appearances on C-SPAN
- Select Newspaper Clippings
- Cited in Barbara Love’s book, Feminists Who Changed America 1963-1975, pages 380 – 381
