Former U.S. Rep. Pat Schroeder has died at the age of 82.
Her former press secretary, Andrea Campa announced that Schoreder passed away at a hospital in Celebration, Florida Monday night after suffering a stroke.

Schroeder was elected to Congress in Colorado in 1972 and served for 24 years after being reelected 11 times.
She was known as one of the most influential democrats and a pioneer for women and family rights in Congress. Many say she shook up the government institutions by forcing them to recognize that women had a role to play in government and vowed never to join “the good old boys’ club.”
Despite having seniority, she was never appointed to head a committee. She did, however, help forge several Democratic majorities before deciding to leave Congress in 1997.
She was also the first woman on the House Armed Services Committee but was forced to share a seat with U.S. Rep. Ron Dellums, D-Calif., the first African American once the panel was arranged.
Schroeder stated that Committee Chairman F. Edward Hebert, D-La., thought the committee was no place for a woman or an African American so he put them together because they both only counted as half of a seat.
In her book “24 Years of Housework … and the Place is Still a Mess. My Life in Politics,″ Schroeder wrote about her frustration with a male-dominated government and the slow pace to change in federal institutions.