A Changing of the Guard : Women who won election to Congress this year tend to bring a heftier political resume than their female predecessors.

They both went to Northeastern law schools. They are both liberal Democrats active on women’s issues. They both had two children, ages 6 and 2, when they were first elected to the House.

On paper, the retirement of Rep. Patricia Schroeder (D-Colo.) after 24 years in Congress and her replacement by Diana DeGette (D-Colo.) looks less like legislative baton-passing than an experiment in political cloning.

But there is a world of difference in their political styles and the forces that have shaped their outlook--and therein lies a tale of generational change in the way women are reaching the pinnacles of power in America.

Schroeder won in 1972 with no elective political experience, encouraged by her husband after he had failed in his own bid for a state House seat. She was, and remained throughout her 24 years in Congress, a gadfly, a strident voice for feminist causes, almost a political outsider even as she gained seniority and power.

DeGette comes to Congress with her ideological edges smoothed and polished by experience in the give-and-take of the Colorado Legislature, where she was assistant minority leader before her election to the House this fall. Within three weeks of election day, DeGette made clear she could play the inside game when she wangled a coveted assignment from Democratic leaders on the Commerce Committee.

DeGette is but one of a growing cadre of women who are coming to Congress the way most men do: with a solid resume of political experience. But even as she and her female colleagues move deeper into the congressional mainstream, they still bump up against the vast impediment to rapid change known as the seniority system.

It’s easy to forget that not long ago, DeGette’s brand of political experience was the exception rather than the rule. For years, women often came to Congress on the strength of their connection to a powerful man: as widow or daughter or wife of an accomplished pol.

Between 1941 and 1964, half of the women in the House had never held elective office, including many who were widows of former members, according to Irwin Gertzog, a political scientist at Allegheny College. From 1983 to 1993, he says, almost three-quarters of the women in the House had previously held office.

A look at the six women retiring from Congress this year--and the 13 women arriving--provides a window onto this changing of the guard.

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Among the retirees is Sen. Nancy Landon Kassebaum (R-Kan.), daughter of renowned GOP politician Alfred Landon, who came to the Senate in 1978 having been elected to nothing before but a school board in a tiny Kansas town. Retiring Rep. Cardiss Collins (D-Ill.) inherited her husband’s House seat after he died in a plane crash in 1972. Rep. Barbara F. Vucanovich (R-Nev.) had been a longtime activist in GOP politics but, before going to the House in 1983, had never been elected to office.

By contrast, the latest batch of female newcomers includes six former state legislators, a former mayor and a couple of former gubernatorial candidates. Even the political novices are not exactly homebodies: One is an investment banker, another a financial analyst. One, Jo Anne Emerson (R-Mo.), is a widow of a former House member, but she has been a lobbyist and GOP operative in her own right.

Women’s increased political savvy has made it easier for them to slip into and operate in the culture of Capitol Hill. Both parties have tried to boost women’s representation in leadership with mid- and lower-level appointments.

But women’s increased numbers and experience have not translated more quickly into legislative clout because of the seniority system, which knows no principle for distributing power but time served.

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Among Democrats, there is not a single woman in a committee leadership position in the House or Senate. Rep. Louise M. Slaughter (D-N.Y.) made that fact the center of her recent campaign to be chosen senior Democrat on the House Budget Committee. But she lost badly to a Southern white man, a tribute to the continuing power of the seniority system even within a party that owes a lot to the advantage it enjoys among female voters.

House Republicans have just elected two women to the lower ranks of their leadership. And in the last Congress, the GOP had two women heading committees, one in the House and one in the Senate. But no more. Those two were among this year’s retirees.

Rep. Barbara B. Kennelly (D-Conn.), the only woman elected to the House Democratic leadership, offers a succinct explanation for the limits of women’s power. “The men,” Kennelly says, “came earlier and stayed longer.”