No women served on the Senate Judiciary Committee in 1991

In 1991, Patty Murray sat in her living room watching Anita Hill testify during the Senate confirmation hearings for Supreme Court nominee Clarence Thomas.

Murray, then a Washington state senator, was appalled by what she saw — an all-male Senate Judiciary Committee hurling insensitive questions at Hill about Thomas’s alleged sexual harassment.

“You testified this morning,” Sen. Arlen Specter (R-Pa.) said, “that the most embarrassing question involved — this is not too bad — women’s large breasts. That is a word we use all the time. That was the most embarrassing aspect of what Judge Thomas had said to you.”

Like millions of other women across the country, Murray wondered how Hill would have been treated if there were women on the Judiciary Committee. Later, at a neighborhood party, there was only one subject women wanted to talk about: Hill’s treatment by all those men.