The women elected to the United States Senate in 1992, from left: Patty Murray, Carol Moseley Braun, Dianne Feinstein, and Barbara Boxer. Barbara Mikulski, center, was elected in 1986 (Wikimedia Commons).
It was 1992. Bill Clinton had just been elected to the White House, despite election-time allegations of an affair with Gennifer Flowers. Clarence Thomas had just been confirmed as a Supreme Court justice, despite Anita Hill's accusations of sexual harassment.
And despite naysayers, four women had just been elected United States senators.
One of them, Senator Patty Murray, a Democrat, recently reflected on those early years in an Atlantic interview with MSNBC’s Karen Finney. Self-labeled as “the only preschool teacher in the United States Senate,” Murray claims she never wanted to get into national politics, but was moved to run by what she saw as blatant sexism in the Anita Hill hearings. After defeating a Republican opponent who fatefully dismissed her as “a mom in tennis shoes,” Murray joined Barbara Mikulski and Nancy Kassebaum, as well as the newly elected Barbara Boxer, Dianne Feinstein, and Carol Moseley Braun in the Senate.
The press called it “the year of the woman,” prompting some well-deserved eye-rolling. “Calling 1992 the ‘year of the woman’ makes it sound like the ‘year of the caribou’ or ‘year of the asparagus,’” quipped Mikulski. “We’re not a fad, a fancy, or a year.”