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The media crowned her Di-Fi, shorthand that captured the striking presence and confident leadership that Dianne Feinstein projected as an early pioneer of women winning elective office.
She was the first woman to lead the San Francisco County Board of Supervisors in the ’70s, and while the significance of that office doesn’t resonate today like it did then, it foreshadowed a groundbreaking career for Feinstein, who at 5-foot-10 could easily command a room and hold her own with all the men around her.
“I’ve had to get along in a male world,” she said decades later, after winning election in 1992 to the U.S. Senate from California. “I am of an age where when I first applied for a job, it was ‘women need not apply.’ So the way I’ve chosen to go is to show that I can be effective.”