The number of women involved in American politics is nowhere near where it should be, especially as the 2016 presidential election approaches, former Colorado congresswoman Patricia Scott Schroeder told students in an online webinar on Thursday.

While Schroeder, one of the most tenured congresswomen in history, helped pave the path for women in American government, her uptake of the role was not an easy transition: “Someone said to me, ‘How can you be a congresswomen and a mother?’ As a smartass 31-year-old, I said, ‘I have a brain; I have a uterus; they both work,’” she recalled.

At the time of her 1972 election, there were only 14 women in congress, and Schroeder was sworn into congress with a diaper bag over her shoulder and her children in her arms. “Your opponent is sitting there with four kids, and no one ever asked him how he can be a father and a congressman. So ... for a lot of people that was it, but also lot of people thought, ‘Maybe, you know, she’s right. Why it is only one way?’” said Schroeder.

Even now, over 40 years later, the trajectory of women in politics is not where it should be, Schroeder said, citing the World Economic Forum’s global gender gap report, which was released last week. The report ranks the U.S. 49th in the world in terms of progress for women, estimating that it will take another 170 years until equal pay arrives in America. “I was disappointed, let me say, but not shocked,” she said of the report’s findings.

The disparity between men and women in politics comes down to the lack of confidence and encouragement for young women to get involved in government, said Schroeder. “They’ve found it’s that men apply for jobs that they’re not nearly qualified for, while women will rarely apply for any job unless they’re a hundred and ten percent qualified for it,” she explained.

“I remember when I first got to Congress, I asked the Library of Congress research group over there, how long did they think it would be before half the congress was female? They said, ‘430 years,’ and I thought, ‘Wow, they got some male chauvinist pig over there; what’s going on?’ But maybe they’re right; we’ve made incremental progress, [but] we still don’t have anywhere near critical mass.”

In response to a question about the Hillary Clinton’s navigation as the first presidential woman nominee, Schroeder said it’s overdue for America to have a woman in leadership compared to the rest of the world.

Schroeder herself briefly entered the presidential race in 1987 but withdrew due to lack of funding. In her own run, she recalled being told she didn’t look “presidential.”

“I’d say, ‘You’re right; no one who’s been president looks like me,’” she joked.

But in 2016, the discrimination against Clinton takes on a different form, she asserted. “It’s a lot more subtle, but it’s very real. She is very qualified, and they’ll stipulate she’s very qualified, but the same person will turn around and say, ‘But I don't like her.’ It seems almost impossible for a woman to be qualified and ambitious enough to go out there and take all of the bricks and everything else thrown at them and be ‘likable,’” Schroeder said.

“What I think is good about [Clinton] is that the world knows her, they know she’s knowledgeable and that she’s no-nonsense. They’re going to treat her with great respect,” she said.

In this first installment of a new monthly livecast series, “Conversations with Extraordinary Women,” Schroeder spoke alongside moderator Florence Graves, the founder and director of the Schuster Institute for Investigative Journalism and a resident scholar at the Brandeis Women's Studies Research Center. The panel was hosted by Prof. Jill Greenlee (POL) on behalf of the Women’s, Gender and Sexuality Studies Program and the Rabb School of Continuing Studies. The livecast series is set to broadcast monthly.