PEW Research: Women Make History in 118th Congress

Today we are looking at women in government. The number of women in the 118th Congress is the highest in U.S. history (28%), an increase of 59% since the 112th Congress in 2013, but they remain far behind their share of the general population.

22 new congresswomen were elected to the House of Representatives in the 2022 midterm elections, including the first openly LGBTQ woman to represent Vermont in Congress. This year, many female incumbents ran for reelection, including Marcy Kaptur, the longest-serving female member of Congress.

The new Congress has 109 Democratic women and 44 Republican women. It hasn't always been this way. The majority of the dozen women elected to the House before the 1929 stock market crash were Republicans, and their numbers remained close for decades afterward. There has been an increasing gender gap since the 1970s, and since 1992, two-thirds of women elected to the House and Senate have been Democrats.

The history of women in Congress began in 1916 when Representative Jeannette Rankin of Montana was elected to the House. It has only been in the last few decades that women have been serving in greater numbers. Over two-thirds of all women elected to the House (261 of 381) were elected in 1992 or later. Senate history is similar: 43 of the 59 women ever elected to the Senate – including one new female senator – have served since 1992 or later.

Women gained the right to vote in 1920 after the 19th Amendment was ratified. In 1921, Alice Mary Robertson of Oklahoma became the first woman to defeat an incumbent congressman. During a sudden recall of Congress in 1922, veteran suffragist Rebecca Latimer Felton of Georgia was sworn in as the first female senator, though she served only one day.

As women's roles expanded in broader society, their numbers gradually increased in the House. In contrast, there were few female senators in the 1980s. In 1992, later called “The Year of the Woman” four new female senators and 24 new women were elected to Congress.

Many women entered Congress either by election or appointment after their deceased husbands or fathers. Several of them achieved distinction on Capitol Hill, including Margaret Chase Smith, who served four full terms in both the House and Senate.