Patsy Matsu Takemoto was born on December 6, 1927 in Paia, Hawaii. She graduated in 1944 from Maui High School as the valedictorian. After graduation, she went on to attend Wilson College in Pennsylvania and the University of Nebraska but transferred after facing racial discrimination and being diagnosed with a thyroid condition that required surgery. She finished her schooling at the University of Hawaii and aspired to become a doctor. When none of the 20 medical schools she applied to would accept women she changed her career path to law with the intention of creating change for women through the judicial process. But firms refused to hire her because she had a daughter and employers said she couldn’t work long hours. So she became a politician and wrote legislation that changed the politics of gender, knocking down barriers to educational opportunity for millions of women.
“I didn’t start off wanting to be in politics,” Patsy Takemoto Mink once told a reporter. “Not being able to get a job from anybody changed things.”
And Mink changed a lot of things. The first woman of color elected to Congress, she co-authored Title IX, which mandated equal treatment for women and men in education. After 45 years, the law has led to dramatic progress: Now 11.5 million women attend college, compared with 8.9 million men. Before Title IX, just 300,000 girls nationwide participated in high school sports every year, versus the 3.5 million who do today. The fields of medicine and law that first excluded Mink are now almost equal in their enrollment of male and female students.
