Senator Dianne Feinstein passed away on Friday, September 29, at 90 years of age. A Stanford history major, she became the first female to preside over the San Francisco Board of Supervisors, the first woman mayor of San Francisco, and the first and longest-serving woman to represent California in the U.S. Senate, serving there for more than three decades. During her tenure there, she cast over 9,500 votes.
After her death, one longtime member of the League of Women Voters, who had worked in a can-producing factory in a job once reserved for men, said that Feinstein among others helped to make such workplaces accessible to women. She also remembers Feinstein with her baby at League protests. As a young single mother, Feinstein demonstrated in support of the civil rights movement. In San Francisco she was appointed to a state women’s prison board and opposed local jail conditions there.
In the Senate, Feinstein supported and fought for many progressive causes:
- She authored an amendment to a 1994 bill banning certain semiautomatic weapons and continued to fight steadfastly for gun control.
- She opposed the CIA’s use of torture—so-called “enhanced interrogation techniques”— against suspected enemies abroad.
- Although she voted to authorize the Iraq War following the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, she later expressed her severe regret for taking that position.
- She fought to mitigate climate change, working to reduce the use of fossil fuels in vehicles and to preserve threatened public lands.
- She took stands in favor of women’s reproductive rights, including a woman’s right to abortion care.
- She supported politicians working together across the aisle. As Feinstein said, “I know the terrible things that happen and I know how to cure them. And there’s only one way to do it, and that’s to work together.”
Her greatest contribution, according to many women throughout the decades, was that she emboldened women in a world dominated by men. “She inspired women like me to leadership,” said Eleni Kounalakis, the lieutenant governor of California. “Dianne broke marble ceilings for the rest of us.”
—Kitty Kroger
