In the entire history of the United States Senate, a mere 51 women have served. In total. Ever. The number serving at any one time has risen slowly - and sometimes gone backwards - since the first woman joined our nation’s most important deliberative body in 1922. That was Rebecca Latimer Felton (D., GA) She served for one day when she was appointed to fill a vacancy when her husband died. The next woman, Hattie Caraway, was also appointed to the seat held by her late husband, Thaddeus Caraway of Arkansas. Like Rebecca, power brokers counted on Hattie to relinquish the seat when the regular election came around. Hattie balked and became the first woman duly elected to the Senate through the election cycle in 1932.
Early on the numbers were small but women were finding their voices. It was a woman, Margaret Chase Smith, who was the first to denounce McCarthyism in her now famous “Declaration of Conscience” speech in 1960. McCarthy referred to her and the six male senators who supported her as Snow White and the Six Dwarfs.
As the number of women has grown, there have been signs of progress. The women’s bathroom now has 4 stalls (2 were added in 2013) and the pool has been co-ed since 2008. More importantly, women are rising to leadership roles. Nancy Landon Kassebaum (R., KS) was the first woman to lead a major standing committee when she was appointed in 1995 to lead the Committee on Labor and Human Resources. She was the only woman in the Senate when elected in 1978. Kassebaum was also the first woman ever elected to a full term in the Senate without her husband having previously served in Congress. (Although her father was the former Governor of Kansas).
The other good news is that the rate of change is accelerating. For most of the 20th century, the number of women in the Senate was 0. Women finally gained a permanent hold in 1978. Since that time, there has always been at least one woman in the Senate. By the beginning of the 1990s, women claimed a total of 5 seats - including two from the State of California. At the beginning of the 21st Century in 2000, there were 9 female senators. By 2002, there were 14 - the first time women hit the double digits. In 2018, eighty-seven years after Senator Caraway was elected by the voters, we hit a new high at 22 women or 22%. The balance is not even between the parties. Republicans are represented by 5 women while the Democrats have 17. The balance between Republicans and Democrats hasn’t always been so stark. Of the 51 women who have served, 34 have been Democrats and 17 Republican.
Leadership and tenure matter when it comes to getting things done in the US Senate and women are starting to amass both. The 113th Congress (2013-2015) had the highest number of Committee Chairs with 7. Female Senators chaired such powerful committees as the Appropriations Committee, Budget Committee, Select Committee on Intelligence and Agriculture, Nutrition and Forestry Committee. That number dropped to 1 with the advent of republican control in the 114th Congress in 2015 with Lisa Murkowski (R., AL) chairing the Energy and Natural Resources Committee. Susan Collins (R., ME) also serves as Chair of the Special Committee on Aging. There are 20 standing committees in the US Senate.
There is obviously a way to go, however. And more “firsts” to make. Not only in the total numbers but in overall representation. Three states have never elected a woman to congress - The Senate or the House of Representatives. Delaware, Mississippi and Vermont have never had a woman represent them in Congress. Iowa jumped off that list with the election of Joni Ernst (R., IA) in 2014. Women are also woefully underrepresented in some powerful committees. While the highest-ranking Democrat on the Senate Judiciary Committee is a woman — Dianne Feinstein (D., CA) — not a single Republican woman has ever served on the committee. A female - neither Republican or Democrat - has never chaired the powerful Judiciary or Foreign Relations or Armed Services Committees.
