Many female incumbents who sought reelection this midterm cycle – 105 representatives and all five senators – kept their seats. For 2022 election results, we used data from Ballotpedia, The Associated Press and The New York Times, as well as news reports.

House of Representatives Office of the Historian, the Congressional Research Service’s “Women in the United States Congress, 1917-2014” and CQ Roll Call. Virginia’s 4th Congressional District seat, now vacant after Democrat Donald McEachin’s recent death, is excluded from the analysis.įor historical data on Congress, we used data from the Biographical Directory of the United States Congress, the U.S. Independent members of Congress are counted with the party they caucus with. It includes voting and nonvoting members. This analysis builds on earlier Pew Research Center work to analyze the gender makeup of Congress. Related: A record number of women are serving in the 117th Congress

The Senate gained just one new female member: Republican Katie Britt, who became the first woman senator from Alabama. Of the 22 freshman representatives who are women, 15 are Democrats and seven are Republicans. The 2022 midterm elections sent nearly two dozen new congresswomen to the House, including Becca Balint, a Vermont Democrat who became both the first woman and openly LGBTQ person elected to Congress from the state. In the Senate, women hold 25 of 100 seats, tying the record number they held in the 116th Congress. A record 128 women are serving in the newly elected House, accounting for 29% of the chamber’s total. That represents a 59% increase from the 96 women who were serving in the 112th Congress a decade ago, though it remains far below women’s share of the overall U.S. history and a considerable increase from where things stood even a decade ago.Ĭounting both the House of Representatives and the Senate, women account for 153 of 540 voting and nonvoting members of Congress.

Women make up more than a quarter (28%) of all members of the 118th Congress – the highest percentage in U.S. She is the first woman to be Senate president pro tempore. 3, 2023, as Murray’s husband, Rob Murray, looks on. Patty Murray, D-Wash., is ceremonially sworn in by Vice President Kamala Harris in the Old Senate Chamber on Capitol Hill in Washington on Jan.

Piercy woman on the edge of time