Women are poised to reach a new milestone in Congress next year, as a surge of female candidates could expand their numbers to nearly a quarter of the House and Senate for the first time in history.
As Bloomberg reports, the House likely will set records on the total number of women newly elected at once—more than three dozen if the closest races break their way—and on the total number of women serving simultaneously, which may exceed 100 for the first time.
The gains by women are expected to favor Democrats—they outnumber female Republican nominees by better than 3-to-1—and represent a significant component of the Democratic effort to retake control of the House.
Pushing female representation in the House close to 25% “would be a significant jump,” says Kelly Dittmar, a scholar at the Center for American Women and Politics at Rutgers University. “Congress is an institution built for and by men and it takes a long time to better accommodate and include people who weren’t there to begin with.”
The record of at least 255 women on the ballot as major party congressional candidates represents a little less than half of those who ran in the primaries, a sign of how tough it is to get to Washington.
In the Senate, where there currently are 23 women among 100 members, potential gains are likely to be more modest.
The newcomers generally are younger than the average member of the current Congress—the oldest in recent history—and propelled by female-driven grassroots organizing. They are ideologically diverse, too, from progressive Democrats to conservative Republicans.
