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ways in which the law does not recognize women’s unpaid work. The con-

troversy provided her with a framework for discussing her key campaign

issues: reducing violent crime and increasing federal support to help fam-

ilies and children.

Lofgren’s congressional priorities include health care, housing, chil-

dren and families, and education. As a member of the minority party, Lof-

gren has focused her efforts on revising Republican proposals to reflect

more of her philosophy. She has passed amendments that restored pro-

tections for battered spouses and children in an immigration bill and that

provided affordable Internet access for public schools in a telecommuni-

cations bill. Even though Lofgren has had success amending Republican

proposals, she has found the House’s work deficient, saying: “I’m frus-

trated by the sheer volume of stupid things we’ve done.”

Born in Palo Alto, California, Zoe Lofgren received her bachelor’s de-

gree in political science from Stanford University in 1970 and her law de-

gree from the University of Santa Clara Law School in 1975. She has had

a private law practice and has taught classes in immigration law, legal re-

search, and writing at the University of Santa Clara Law School. A trustee

on the San Jose–Evergreen Community College District from 1979 to

1981, she then served on the Santa Clara County Board of Supervisors

from 1981 to 1995. As a supervisor, Lofgren worked to improve and ex-

pand the county’s highways system.

See also Congress, Women in

References Congressional Quarterly, Politics in America 1998 (1997);

www.house.gov/lofgren/bio_lofgren.html.

Long, Catherine Small (b. 1924)

Democrat Catherine Long of Louisiana served in the U.S. House of Rep-

resentatives from 30 March 1985 to 3 January 1987. After her husband’s

death in office, she won the special election to fill the vacancy. Congress-

woman Long cosponsored legislation that secured pension and health

benefits for women and restricted race and sex discrimination in insur-

ance. She did not run for a second term.

Born in Dayton, Ohio, Catherine Long earned her bachelor of arts

degree from Louisiana State University in 1948. After serving as a phar-

macist’s mate in the U.S. Navy, she worked on two congressional staffs.

She developed her political skills by working for the state party’s finance

council and the party’s state central committee.

See also Congress, Women in

References Office of the Historian, U.S. House of Representatives, Women in

Congress, 1917–1990 (1991).

Long, Catherine Small 405

Long, Rose McConnell (1892–1970)

Democrat Rose Long of Louisiana served in the U.S. Senate from 31 Jan-

uary 1936 to 2 January 1937. Following the assassination of her husband,

U.S. senator Huey Long, Rose Long was first appointed and then elected

to fill the vacancy. While in office, she worked to enlarge Chalmette Na-

tional Historic Park but did not run for a full term. Her son Russell Long

was also a U.S. senator.

Born in Greensburg, Indiana, Rose Long was a secretary at a hard-

ware store before her marriage.

See also Congress, Women in

References Office of the Historian, U.S. House of Representatives, Women in

Congress, 1917–1990 (1991).

Long Thompson, Jill Lynnette (b. 1952)

Democrat Jill Long Thompson of Indiana served in the U.S. House of

Representatives from 28 March 1989 to 3 January 1995. After her con-

gressional service, Long Thompson was appointed undersecretary of agri-

culture for rural development in President Bill Clinton’s administration.

Born in Warsaw, Indiana, Long Thompson received her bachelor of

science degree from Valparaiso University in 1974 and a master’s degree in

business administration in 1978 and a doctoral degree in 1984, both from

Indiana University. Before running for Congress, she was a professor of

business at both universities. From 1983 to 1986, she was a member of the

Valparaiso City Council. She ran unsuccessfully for the U.S. Senate in 1986

and the U.S. House of Representatives in 1988.

When the House seat was vacated in 1989, Long Thompson ran once

again, this time successfully. A Democrat in a strong Republican district,

she found a balance between her party’s interests and those of her district.

For example, she supported prochoice legislation and increasing the min-

imum wage while taking more conservative positions on some fiscal votes.

In 1990, Long Thompson gained passage of amendments to the farm

bill, including one to give farmers planting flexibility and another to give

incentives to farmers who used conservation techniques. She also passed

measures for expanded hospice care services for terminally ill veterans

and for counseling for women veterans who were sexually harassed or as-

saulted during their military service.

Defeated in her 1994 reelection attempt, Long Thompson became a

fellow at the Institute of Politics at the John F. Kennedy School of Gov-

ernment at Harvard University and a member of the board of directors of

the Commodity Credit Corporation. Beginning in 1995, she served as un-

dersecretary for development in the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

406 Long, Rose McConnell

See also Congress, Women in; Reproductive Rights; Sexual Harassment

References Congressional Quarterly, Politics in America 1994 (1993);

www.usda.gov/agencies/gallery/thompson.htm.

Louchheim, Kathleen (Katie) Scofield (1903–1991)

A Democratic Party leader in the 1940s and 1950s, Kathleen Louchheim

was the first woman to obtain an appointment in the higher levels of the

U.S. State Department, serving as deputy assistant secretary of state from

1962 to 1968. Louchheim began working as a volunteer with the Demo-

cratic National Committee in 1938 and worked in Franklin D. Roosevelt’s

1940 presidential campaign. In 1941, she became assistant to the director

of public information in the Office of Foreign Relief and Rehabilitation

Operations in the State Department. In 1945 and 1946, she was a dis-

placed persons specialist and worked in Germany.

After working in Adlai Stevenson’s unsuccessful 1952 presidential

campaign, Louchheim became assistant chairperson of the Democratic

National Committee, with responsibilities in the labor division. Director

of women’s activities for the party from 1953 to 1960, she sought to make

politics more interesting for women, to identify women who could raise

money on the national level, and to encourage women to serve in the

party’s leadership. She also was a party vice chair from 1956 to 1960.

With John F. Kennedy’s election in 1960 and her party’s return to the

White House, Louchheim was appointed special assistant and consultant

on women’s activities in the State Department in 1961. She said her duties

were to greet foreign women visitors and diplomats’ wives. Appointed

deputy assistant secretary of state in 1962, she was the first woman to hold

the position. Deputy assistant secretary of state for public affairs for a

short time, she then served as deputy assistant secretary of state for com-

munity advisory services from 1963 to 1966 and for educational and cul-

tural affairs until 1968. The next two years, she was the U.S. ambassador

to the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization.

Born in New York City, Louchheim attended Columbia University

from 1926 to 1927. She wrote With or Without Roses (1966), By the Political

Sea (1970), and The Making of the New Deal—The Insiders Speak (1983).

See also Democratic Party, Women in the; Edwards, India Moffett

References Louchheim, By the Political Sea (1970).

Lowey, Nita Melnikoff (b. 1937)

Democrat Nita Lowey of New York entered the U.S. House of Representa-

tives on 3 January 1989. Her political career began with a neighborhood

Lowey, Nita Melnikoff 407

gathering in 1974 to help the Democratic candidate for lieutenant governor,

Mario Cuomo. He lost that election but was appointed New York secre-

tary of state, and he appointed Lowey to the antipoverty division of his of-

fice, where she served from 1975 to 1985. She then became assistant sec-

retary of state, a position she held until 1987.

As a member of Congress, Lowey supported the Freedom of Access

to Clinic Entrances Act of 1994 and Medicaid funding for abortions for

poor women. She opposed a rule that prohibited abortion counseling and

referrals in federally funded planning clinics and also opposed legislation

to make partial birth abortion illegal. In 1998, Lowey succeeded in gain-

ing House and Senate approval for a measure providing contraceptive

coverage for federal workers whose health insurance included pharma-

ceuticals, but the conference committee deleted it. In a compromise,

Lowey proposed exempting physicians who oppose contraceptive cover-

age for religious or moral reasons and obtained its approval.

Lowey was among the congresswomen who marched to the U.S. Sen-

ate in October 1991 to discuss Anita Hill’s accusations that U.S. Supreme

Court nominee Clarence Thomas had sexually harassed her. Lowey also

cochaired the Congressional Caucus for Women’s Issues in 1997.

Education, child care, health, and nutrition have also been priorities

for Lowey, particularly as they relate to poor people, women, minorities,

and the elderly. She successfully worked for a bill that provided funding

for drug education and counseling services for students. On the subject of

agricultural subsidies to farmers who have more than $100,000 in non-

farm income, she said: “It doesn’t make sense to me to have millionaires

collecting subsidies.” She has also tried to eliminate subsidies for peanut

farming. In the 104th, 105th, and 106th Congresses (1995–2001), she held

the leadership position of minority whip at large.

Born in Bronx, New York, Lowey received her bachelor of arts degree

from Mount Holyoke College in 1959.

See also Congress, Women in; Congressional Caucus for Women’s Issues;

Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances Act of 1994; Hill, Anita Faye;

Reproductive Rights; Sexual Harassment

References Congressional Quarterly, Politics in America 1994 (1993), Politics

in America 1998 (1997); www.house.gov/lowey/bio./htm.

Luce, Clare Boothe (1903–1987)

Republican Clare Boothe Luce of Connecticut served in the U.S. House of

Representatives from 3 January 1943 to 3 January 1947. A playwright,

author, and journalist, Luce became a celebrity with the Broadway pro-

ductions of The Women (1936), which was made into a movie, and Kiss the

Boys Goodbye (1938), several years before she ran for Congress.

408 Luce, Clare Boothe

Born in New York, New York, Clare Boothe Luce attended St. Mary’s

School and Miss Mason’s School, graduating in 1919. Editor of Vanity Fair

magazine in the early 1930s, she helped her husband Henry Luce create

Time magazine, for which she was a newspaper correspondent during

World War II. She also wrote Europe in the Spring (1940), based on four

months she spent observing the war in Europe. When she returned to the

United States, she campaigned for unsuccessful Republican presidential

candidate Wendell Wilkie.

Congresswoman Luce sponsored a bill to create a department of

children’s welfare, which would have included health, educational, and

welfare services; another to establish a department of science and re-

search; and a measure to require equal pay for equal work regardless of sex

or color. During both of her terms in office, she offered resolutions for

racial equality in the armed services. She decided against running for a

third term in 1946.

President Dwight Eisenhower appointed her ambassador to Italy in

1953, making her the second woman to hold the office. She served in it

until 1957, and was given the Presidential Medal of Freedom. She was ap-

pointed ambassador to Brazil in 1959 and confirmed, but a bitter con-

frontation during the confirmation hearing led her to resign three days

after she was confirmed. Luce served on the President’s Foreign Intelli-

gence Advisory Board from 1973 to 1979 and from 1982 to 1987. She re-

mained active in Republican politics, working for presidential candidates

until the mid-1980s.

Luce, Clare Boothe 409

Representative Clare

Boothe Luce (R-CT)

with her husband,

Henry Luce,

advocated equal pay

for equal work and

racial equality in the

armed services

(Library of Congress)

See also Congress, Women in; Edwards, India Moffett; Equal Pay Act of 1963

References Morris, Rage for Fame (1997); Office of the Historian, U.S. House of

Representatives, Women in Congress, 1917–1990 (1991).

Lusk, Georgia Lee Witt (1893–1971)

Democrat Georgia Lusk of New Mexico served in the U.S. House of Rep-

resentatives from 3 January 1947 to 3 January 1949. She supported federal

aid to education, improved school lunch programs, and creation of a cab-

inet-level department of education. Her other legislative interests in-

cluded increasing benefits for veterans, providing military assistance for

Turkey and Greece, and strengthening foreign aid programs. She ran for

reelection in 1948 but lost in the primary.

Born in Carlsbad, New Mexico, Georgia Lusk graduated from New

Mexico State Teachers College in 1914. The next year she married

rancher-banker Dolph Lusk. She had two sons and was pregnant with her

third child when her husband died in 1919. To support her family, Geor-

gia Lusk managed the family’s ranch and returned to teaching.

Elected county school superintendent in 1924, Lusk moved to the

state level in 1930, when she ran for state superintendent of schools, hold-

ing the office from 1931 to 1935, 1943 to 1947, and 1955 to 1960. During

her first two terms, Lusk guided the legislature’s recodification of school

laws and convinced legislators to increase teacher salaries, fund school

construction, implement a retirement program for teachers, and provide

students with free textbooks. After her term in Congress, President Harry

Truman appointed her to the War Claims Commission in 1949, where she

served until 1953.

See also Congress, Women in

References H. W. Wilson, Current Biography: Who’s News and Why, 1947 (1947);

Office of the Historian, U.S. House of Representatives, Women in Congress,

1917–1990 (1991); Sicherman and Green, eds., Notable American Women: The

Modern Period (1980).

Lyon, Phyllis (b. 1924)

Feminist and lesbian activist Phyllis Lyon and her life partner Del Martin

founded Daughters of Bilitis in 1955, the first national lesbian organization,

and they created the organization’s publication, The Ladder, which began

publishing in 1956. Its first editor, Lyon coauthored with Martin Les-

bian/Woman (1972) and Lesbian Love and Liberation (1973), two of the ear-

liest books written by and about lesbians. Lyon served on the San Francisco

Commission on the Status of Women from 1976 to 1979 and on the San

Francisco Human Rights Commission from 1976 to 1987. After earning a

410 Lusk, Georgia Lee Witt

doctorate in education in human sexuality at the Institute for Advanced

Study of Human Sexuality, she taught at the institute from 1976 to 1987.

See also Daughters of Bilitis; Lesbian Rights; Martin, Del

References DeLeon, ed., Leaders from the 1960s: A Biographical Sourcebook of

American Activism (1994).

Lyon, Phyllis 411

MacKinnon, Catharine Alice (b. 1946)

Feminist scholar and lawyer Catharine MacKinnon has reframed ques-

tions of sexual harassment and pornography, opening new legal argu-

ments for women seeking justice. She has been described as “the law’s

most prominent feminist legal theorist.” An intellectual and legal leader in

the feminist movement, MacKinnon became involved with the issue of

sexual harassment in 1975, after learning the story of a woman who had

left her job because she was sexually harassed. Denied unemployment

benefits on the basis that she had left voluntarily, the woman appealed but

lost. Although MacKinnon was not a lawyer at the time, she used the case

as the basis for her thesis, which redefined sexual harassment as a form of

sex discrimination. The thesis became part of her first book, Sexual Ha-

rassment of Working Women: A Case of Sex Discrimination (1979). In 1986,

MacKinnon was cocounsel in the first sexual harassment case heard by the

U.S. Supreme Court. In Meritor Savings Bank v. Vinson, MacKinnon suc-

cessfully defined a hostile environment as a form of sexual harassment

that was illegal under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.

In the 1980s, MacKinnon turned her attention to developing a cam-

paign against pornography, calling it a form of sex discrimination that

harms women. Working with feminist theorist Andrea Dworkin, MacKin-

non met Linda Marchiano, who was known as Linda Lovelace in porno-

graphic movies. Marchiano claimed that she had been imprisoned, tor-

tured, raped, and coerced into making pornographic movies, claims that

MacKinnon helped publicize, even though she could not recover damages

for Marchiano.

413

With Dworkin, MacKinnon drafted antipornography legislation for

states and ordinances for cities and lobbied for them across the nation.

When they have been enacted, they have been rejected on appeal in the

courts. Controversy has surrounded MacKinnon’s theories on pornogra-

phy, with feminists both applauding and condemning them. In 1987,

MacKinnon published a collection of her lectures on several topics, in-

cluding pornography, in Feminism Unmodified: Discourses on Life and

Law. The next year, she and Dworkin coauthored Pornography and Civil

Rights: A New Day for Women’s Equality, which focuses more narrowly on

the topic of pornography. Toward a Feminist Theory of the State (1989)

continued the development of her ideas on pornography, as did Only

Words (1993).

MacKinnon participated in writing the brief for a case heard by the

Canadian Supreme Court, which upheld the obscenity provisions of its

criminal law. MacKinnon noted:“This makes Canada the first place in the

world that says what is obscene is what harms women, not what offends

our values.”

MacKinnon earned her bachelor of arts degree from Smith College

in 1969, her law degree from Yale University Law School in 1977, and her

doctoral degree from Yale University in 1987.

See also Meritor Savings Bank v. Vinson; Pornography; Sexual Harassment

References H. W. Wilson, Current Biography Yearbook, 1994 (1994); New York

Times, 6 October 1991.

Madar, Olga Marie (1916–1996)

Union leader Olga Madar was the first woman elected to the International

Executive Board (IEB) of United Auto Workers (UAW), serving on it from

1966 to 1974, and was the founding president of the Coalition of Labor

Union Women (CLUW). Madar’s commitment to the labor movement

came from a personal experience while working on Chrysler Corpora-

tion’s assembly line in 1933. Hired for her skill as a softball player, she was

unable to keep up with the assembly line and had nightmares about it.

However, she kept her job, while others were being laid off during the De-

pression, because of her athletic ability. She later explained:“There was no

union then and the fact that they would hire me when other workers were

being laid off—just because I could play softball—was incredible. It was

my first indication that a union was badly needed.”

In 1947, Madar became the director of the UAW Recreation Depart-

ment. Eliminating racism in professional bowling was her first assign-

ment, which she accomplished in 1952 when the American Bowling Con-

gress and the Women’s International Bowling Congress ended their

white-only rules.

414 Madar, Olga Marie