Women in the United States Senate

There have been 35 women in the United States Senate since the establishment of that body in 1789, meaning that out of the 1,897 Americans who have served in the United States Senate since that time, 1.85 percent have been female. [cite web |url=http://www.senate.gov/artandhistory/history/resources/pdf/chronlist.pdf |title=Chronological list of U.S. Senators] Women were first elected in number in 1992. Today 16 of the 100 U.S. Senators are women.

History

Throughout most of the Senate's history, the body was almost entirely male. Until 1920, few women ran for the Senate, and even fewer were elected until several decades ago. This is due to many factors, including the lack of women's suffrage in many states until ratification of the Nineteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution, women's limited access to higher education until the mid-1900s, public perceptions of gender roles, and barriers to women's advancement such as sex discrimination, which still plays a factor in their limited numbers today.

The first woman in the Senate was Rebecca Latimer Felton who served for one day in 1922. Hattie Caraway became the first woman to win election to the Senate in 1930. No women served from 1922 to 1931, 1945 to 1947, and 1973 to 1978. Since 1978, there has always been at least one woman in the Senate.

There were still few women in the Senate near the end of the 20th century, long after women began to make up a significant portion of the membership of the House. As late as 1992 in fact, only two women were serving in the Senate, Nancy Kassebaum of Kansas and Barbara Mikulski of Maryland.

This began to change in the wake of the Clarence Thomas/Anita Hill hearings, with the election of the 103rd Congress in 1992, which commentators dubbed the "Year of the Woman". In addition to Sen. Mikulski, who was reelected that year, four women were elected to the Senate, joining Mikulski and Kassebaum. These additions significantly diminished the popular perception of the Senate as an exclusive "boys' club". The taboo having been broken, many more women in both the Democratic and Republican parties began to run for the Senate in subsequent years, and several have been elected since then. In fact, of the twenty-five women who have ever been elected (rather than only appointed) to the Senate, sixteen are currently serving.

Twenty-two female senators have been Democrats while thirteen have been Republicans. Of the sixteen female senators currently serving, eleven are Democrats and five are Republicans.

Currently

As of the 2006 elections, there are 16 women (an all-time high) serving in the 100-person body, including freshmen Senators Claire McCaskill and Amy Klobuchar. The Senatorial representation of three states (California, Washington and Maine) is entirely female. California's current two senators (Boxer and Feinstein) are the first two women to be elected to the U.S. Senate in the same election (in 1992) from the same state. Six of the women currently serving as Senators have also been elected to serve in the U.S. House of Representatives—a distinction once held by only Margaret Chase Smith—Mikulski, Snowe, Boxer, Lincoln, Stabenow, and Cantwell.

Timeline of female U.S. Senators (1922-present)

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DateFormat = yyyyPeriod = from:1920 till:2020TimeAxis = orientation:horizontalScaleMajor = unit:year increment:5 start:1920

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PlotData= width:5 align:left fontsize:S shift:(5,-4) anchor:till barset:Senators from:1922 till:1922 color:PA text:"Rebecca Latimer Felton (1922)" from:1931 till:1945 color:PA text:"Hattie Wyatt Caraway (1931 - 1945)" from:1936 till:1937 color:PA text:"Rose McConnell Long (1935 - 1937)" from:1937 till:1938 color:PA text:"Dixie Bibb Graves (1937 - 1938)" from:1938 till:1939 color:GP text:"Gladys Pyle (1938 - 1939)" from:1948 till:1948 color:GP text:"Vera Calahan Bushfield (1948)" from:1949 till:1973 color:GP text:"Margaret Chase Smith (1949 - 1973)" from:1954 till:1954 color:GP text:"Eva Kelley Bowring (1954)" from:1954 till:1954 color:GP text:"Hazel Hempel Abel (1954)" from:1960 till:1967 color:PA text:"Maurine Brown Neuberger (1960 - 1967)" from:1972 till:1972 color:PA text:"Elaine S. Edwards (1972)" from:1978 till:1978 color:PA text:"Muriel Humphrey (1978)" from:1978 till:1978 color:PA text:"Maryon Pittman Allen (1978)" from:1978 till:1997 color:GP text:"Nancy Kassebaum (1978 - 1997)" from:1981 till:1987 color:GP text:"Paula Hawkins (1981 - 1987)" from:1987 till:2008 color:PA text:"Barbara Mikulski (1987-present)" from:1992 till:1992 color:PA text:"Jocelyn Burdick (1992)" from:1992 till:2008 color:PA text:"Dianne Feinstein (1992-present)" from:1993 till:2008 color:PA text:"Barbara Boxer (1993-present)" from:1993 till:1999 color:PA text:"Carol Moseley-Braun (1993 - 1999)" from:1993 till:2008 color:PA text:"Patty Murray (1993-present)" from:1993 till:2008 color:GP text:"Kay Bailey Hutchison (1993-present)" from:1995 till:2008 color:GP text:"Olympia Snowe (1995-present)" from:1996 till:1996 color:GP text:"Sheila Frahm (1996)" from:1997 till:2008 color:GP text:"Susan Collins (1997-present)" from:1997 till:2008 color:PA text:"Mary Landrieu (1997-present)" from:1999 till:2008 color:PA text:"Blanche Lincoln (1999-present)" from:2001 till:2008 color:PA text:"Maria Cantwell (2001-present)" from:2001 till:2002 color:PA text:"Jean Carnahan (2001 - 2002)" from:2001 till:2008 color:PA text:"Hillary Rodham Clinton (2001-present)" from:2001 till:2008 color:PA text:"Debbie Stabenow (2001-present)" from:2002 till:2008 color:GP text:"Lisa Murkowski (2002-present)" from:2003 till:2008 color:GP text:"Elizabeth Dole (2003-present)" from:2007 till:2008 color:PA text:"Amy Klobuchar (2007-present)" from:2007 till:2008 color:PA text:"Claire McCaskill (2007-present)" barset:skip

ee also

*Women in the United States House of Representatives
* Widow's succession

References

External links

* [http://www.senate.gov/artandhistory/history/common/briefing/women_senators.htm U.S. Senate History: Women in the Senate]