page_title: Patsy Mink
section_title: Return to Congress (1990–2002)
hierarchical_section_title: Patsy Mink / Return to Congress (1990–2002)
caption_attribution_description: English: Representative Patsy Mink announces the formation of the Congressional Asian Pacific American Caucus at a press conference with (left to right) Representatives Don Edwards and Norman Mineta, Guam Delegate Robert Underwood, and Representatives Nancy Pelosi and Neil Abercrombie
context_page_description: Patsy Matsu Takemoto Mink was an American attorney and politician from the U.S. state of Hawaii. Mink was a third-generation Japanese American, having been born and raised on the island of Maui. After graduating as valedictorian of the Maui High School class in 1944, she attended the University of Hawaii at Mānoa for two years and subsequently enrolled at the University of Nebraska, where she experienced racism and worked to have segregation policies eliminated. After illness forced her to return to Hawaii to complete her studies there, she applied to 12 medical schools to continue her education but was rejected by all of them. Following a suggestion by her employer, she opted to study law and was accepted at the University of Chicago Law School in 1948. While at university, she met and married a graduate student, John Francis Mink. When they graduated in 1951, Patsy Mink was unable to find employment as a married, Asian woman, and after the birth of their daughter in 1952 the couple moved to Hawaii.
  When she was refused the right to take the bar examination, due to the loss of her Hawaiian territorial residency upon marriage, Mink challenged the sexist statute.
context_section_description: In 1990, Mink was elected to complete the remaining term of her successor in the House, Daniel Akaka. Akaka had been appointed to the Senate to succeed Matsunaga, who had recently died in office. She was elected to a full term six weeks later later, and subsequently was reelected six times. That year, she opposed the Supreme Court nominee Clarence Thomas. When the Senate Judiciary Committee denied Anita Hill the opportunity to give testimony, Mink, and other congresswomen, including Barbara Boxer of California, Louise Slaughter of New York, and Pat Schroeder of Colorado, marched to the Capitol to protest the decision. Their protest was carried on the front page of The New York Times and Hill was later allowed to testify.
  In her second tenure as a House member, Mink worked to revive protections in the socio-economic programs she had worked for in her first six terms, which had been scaled back by subsequent administrations. From 1990 to 1993, she worked on legislation sponsoring the Ovarian Cancer Research Act and amendments to the Higher Education Act. In 1992, she was honored by the American Bar Association with the Margaret Brent Women Lawyers Achievement Award for professional excellence. She co-sponsored the Gender Equity Act of 1993, pressed for universal health care, and introduced a bill to protect reproductive decisions as an individual right. She worked on legislation regarding displaced homemakers, minimum wage increases, occupational safety, pay inequality, and violence against women.
  In May 1994, Mink and Representative Norman Mineta of California co-founded the Congressional Asian Pacific American Caucus for which she became chair in 1995, serving until 1997. She also served as co-chair of the House Democratic Women's Caucus. Mink opposed legislation proposed by the Republican-majority House of the Clinton administration on welfare reform in 1996. She authored the Family Stability and Work Act as an alternative welfare reform measure and repeatedly, though mostly unsuccessfully, lobbied for increased federal safety nets for children and families living in impoverished conditions. She opposed legislation that would limit liability for product injuries and work place discrimination and objected to the ratification of the North American Free Trade Agreement. She was a co-sponsor of the DREAM Act and staunchly opposed the creation of the United States Department of Homeland Security, fearing that it might avert civil liberties and result in another occurrence of policies like the internment camps for Japanese Americans during World War II.
caption: Mink announcing the formation of the Congressional Asian Pacific American Caucus
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