<p>Ida Schmertz, a pioneering feminist and corporate executive who helped establish the first academic center dedicated to American women and politics, and who supported women's advancement in workplaces from docks to the C-suite, died on July 2 in Manhattan at age 91. The cause was kidney failure, according to her daughter.</p>
<p>She described herself as “a feminist before I knew the word” and built her career in Democratic politics and gun-control advocacy before joining Rutgers University after a dean suggested forming a new research unit. This led to the creation of the Center for American Women and Politics at the Eagleton Institute of Politics in 1971, where she served as a founding director alongside Ruth Mandel.</p>
<p>At a time when many academics questioned the value of studying women in politics, Schmertz and Mandel pursued the center as a premier national resource for research and education on women in political life. They later organized the first national conference for female state legislators in 1972, capturing a moment when electoral politics and the women's movement intersected.</p>
<p>Schmertz commissioned a landmark book-length study of the conference by Jeane Kirkpatrick, which helped establish the field as a legitimate topic for political science. After leaving the center in 1975, she advised on women’s issues for New York Gov. Hugh L. Carey and contributed to hiring the first female dockworkers in New York in 1979.</p>
<p>That year she joined American Express, rising to head of corporate affairs and becoming one of the company’s first female senior vice presidents, a position she held for nearly a decade as the firm engaged with local and state governments to revitalize New York City during a period of financial crisis.</p>
<p>Schmertz’s leadership and mentorship were widely recognized, with leaders in business and public service noting her role in advancing women into leadership positions in New York and beyond. Born Ida Schaap in Amsterdam in 1935, she and her family fled Europe during World War II and eventually settled near Philadelphia. She earned a degree from Wellesley College and a master’s in international relations and Russian studies from Columbia University, pursuing interests in Russia and diplomacy that would later influence her work in global economic development.</p>
<p>In the 1990s, she returned to Russia as part of an investment advisory effort supporting women-led businesses and later chaired the Romanian-American Enterprise Fund, aiding Romania’s transition to a market economy. Schmertz was diagnosed with chronic lymphocytic leukemia in the mid-1990s and became an advocate for end-of-life choices, supporting legislation in New York that would allow terminally ill patients to receive a lethal prescription. She died after a long illness, survived by her daughter, a son, four grandsons and two sisters.</p>
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