The U.S. House of Representatives today unanimously approved a resolution renaming the landmark legislation known as "Title IX" after Mink, said Mike Slackman, a spokesman for Mink's Capitol Hill colleague, U.S. Rep. Neil Abercrombie.

Title IX now will be known as the "Patsy T. Mink Equal Opportunity in Education Act."

The Hawai'i Democrat was co-author of the 1972 law that bans gender discrimination in schools that receive federal funds.

Proponents credit it with revolutionizing women's sports and the public's attitudes about women's abilities in athletics.

"Every single woman in this nation who today has been given an equal opportunity in education, and by extension in virtually every other field of endeavor, owes the impetus to that in modern times to Patsy Mink," Abercrombie said in a speech on the House floor. "She was one of the pioneers who transformed Hawaii and transformed this nation."

Mink died Sept. 28 after a monthlong hospitalization with viral pneumonia brought on by chickenpox. She was 74.

Her daughter, Gwendolyn, a professor and the acting chair of the Women's Studies Department at Smith College, said Title IX will be part of a very broad legacy left behind by her mother.

"She'll certainly have a legacy, in substantive terms, as one of the valiant defenders of equality ­ both equality of access and opportunity but also equality in a concrete sense of everybody having a right to a decent existence and health care and food and shelter and so forth," Gwendolyn Mink said in an interview with The Associated Press. "In those sort of social justice terms, I think she has a powerful legacy that will live on.