[Congressional Record Volume 142, Number 43 (Tuesday, March 26, 1996)]
[House]
[Pages H2843-H2844]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




            RECOGNIZING HISTORICAL ACCOMPLISHMENTS OF WOMEN

  Mrs. SCHROEDER. Mr. Speaker, I am continuing to talk a bit about 
women in history since this is Women's History Month.
  One of the things I have been doing this month as I talked to people 
is I carry around a little shoe. It is no bigger than that, and it is a 
shoe that someone gave to me that they bought in an antique store in 
China that was used to go on a woman's foot. When you think about it, 
China was one of the few countries where you were not even better off 
being rich if you were female, and maybe many of you remember the story 
of the three swans written about the three Chinese women who kept 
praying that when they came back they would not come back as a female.
  But when you think about the binding of the foot, and I have not seen 
anyone that could look at that shoe and not shudder to think of the 
pain of what it felt like to have that foot bound, and then when you 
think about the fact that that practice did not stop until halfway 
through the century and there are still women who are older hobbling 
around that had had this done to them, you realize how far the world is 
behind on dealing with women and women's issues.
  Mr. Speaker, when I talk about the binding of the foot, I think we 
bind something in this society, too. We have bound women's minds. 
Women's minds have been bound by our not knowing our real history, not 
knowing what really we contributed to this country, and therefore I 
think we have made women feel that they have no right to ask for 
anything or to ask to be treated equally in this country because the 
image is they did not do anything, why should they get anything? They 
came over here on cruise ships, sat around eating bonbons, getting 
their hair done, and have not done anything except waiting for people 
to win the battles for them.
  Some of the exciting things that have happened while I am in office 
that have gone on to try to correct that image has been the Women in 
the Military Memorial that many, many women have come forward to put 
out there, and whether you look at the Revolutionary War, which had 
women serving in it, Molly Corbit being one that is buried at West 
Point and was the first woman to ever have gotten a full pension just 
like men did because George Washington insisted that was the only fair 
thing, and there were other women who were in the Revolutionary Army, 
too, that got the same thing, or whether you go right on through all 
the wars until the current Bosnian crisis, where we have women in the 
field in Bosnia; you see pictures of them coming across the screen 
today as the First Lady is over there talking to them with the troops.
  You know, women have been like the lioness, I guess, in nature. They 
are perfectly willing to protect their country, to do whatever it 
takes, and any time, whether it was in winning the West, whether it was 
World War II, whether it is today in Bosnia, or whether it was way, way 
back in the Revolutionary War, they did that.
  Mr. Speaker, how sad that we do not know their names and we do not 
know so many of the stories of their bravery. I cannot wait until the 
Women's Military Memorial is done because the stories they are 
collecting are unbelievable. They kind of fell off the table when the 
history books were written, stories of nurses that were downed in World 
War II in Albania and how long it took them to walk to the coast in the 
middle of winter to finally get out, I mean, very brave things that 
would make great movies, and let us hope some day we do make movies 
about

[[Page H2844]]

women in some role other than what we usually see them in.
  But we are not going to see movies about women in history in those 
roles until we recognize that women played those roles in history, and 
I think that is why this month is so critical.
  So I hope more and more schoolchildren and more people everywhere dig 
into history, find the real story and let us get it out. That is never 
to diminish what men did. Of course, men did wonderful, wonderful 
things in help building this Republic, but to tell only half the story 
is really not fair.
  So we have had his story, and this is the month to do her story, and 
I hope we get more people actively involved in looking at that and 
realizing the value of it.
  When we tried too hard to get this front and center in 1976 during 
the Bicentennial, even one of my own newspapers would attack me for 
wasting the House's time for talking about brave American foremothers 
and what they have contributed. In fact, they even attacked me on the 
very front page. I hope we now have much more sense about that and that 
we could move forward and get the record set straight.

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