Electing a Record Number of Women to Congress Is Great. But It’s Not the Goal
Making sure they stick around is the way to get real change.
There were 55 female members of the 103rd U.S. Congress after 1992’s “year of the woman.”
Photographer: Jeffrey Markowitz/Getty Images/Sygma
If every woman in a competitive race going into this year’s midterm elections wins, come January there will be 116 women responsible for crafting our nation’s laws, compared with 107 in the current Congress—a record. For representative democracy, that’s progress. “It’s rectifying an imbalance,” says Margaret O’Mara, a professor at the University of Washington who studies U.S. electoral history. “Simply, our elected representatives should reflect America.”
The addition of women to Congress has been more of a trickle than a wave. They made up less than 10 percent of Congress until 1992, the year after an all-white, all-male group of senators questioned law professor Anita Hill, a black woman, about her experience of workplace sexual harassment. The spectacle galvanized voters, particularly women, who saw their ranks in Congress double.