Women in the United States Senate
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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.[1] Women were first elected in number in 1992. Today 16 of the 100 U.S. Senators are women.
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[edit] 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. 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.
[edit] 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.
| Class | End of Term |
|---|---|
| 1 | 2013 |
| 2 | 2009 |
| 3 | 2011 |
| Class | State | Name | Party | Prior Experience | Education | First took office |
Born | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 3 | Alaska | Lisa Murkowski[2] | Republican | State House of Representatives | Georgetown, Willamette | 2002 | 1957 | |
| 3 | Arkansas | Blanche Lincoln[3] | Democratic | U.S. House (AR-1) | Randolph-Macon Women's College, Arkansas | 1999 | 1960 | |
| 1 | California | Dianne Feinstein | Democratic | Mayor of San Francisco | Stanford University | 1992 | 1933 | |
| 3 | California | Barbara Boxer | Democratic | U.S. House (CA-6) | Brooklyn College | 1993 | 1940 | |
| 2 | Louisiana | Mary Landrieu | Democratic | State Treasurer | Louisiana State | 1997 | 1955 | |
| 1 | Maine | Olympia Snowe | Republican | U.S. House (ME-2) | Maine | 1995 | 1947 | |
| 2 | Maine | Susan Collins | Republican | Deputy State Treasurer | St. Lawrence | 1997 | 1952 | |
| 3 | Maryland | Barbara Mikulski | Democratic | U.S. House (MD-3) | Mount Saint Agnes, Maryland | 1987 | 1936 | |
| 1 | Michigan | Debbie Stabenow | Democratic | U.S. House (MI-8) | Michigan State | 2001 | 1950 | |
| 1 | Minnesota | Amy Klobuchar | Democratic-Farmer-Labor | Hennepin County Attorney | Yale, Chicago | 2007 | 1960 | |
| 1 | Missouri | Claire McCaskill | Democratic | State Auditor | Missouri | 2007 | 1953 | |
| 1 | New York | Hillary Rodham Clinton | Democratic | First Lady of the United States | Wellesley, Yale | 2001 | 1947 | |
| 2 | North Carolina | Elizabeth Dole | Republican | U.S. Secretary of Labor, U.S. Secretary of Transportation | Duke, Harvard | 2003 | 1936 | |
| 1 | Texas | Kay Bailey Hutchison | Republican | State Treasurer | Texas | 1993 | 1943 | |
| 3 | Washington | Patty Murray | Democratic | State Senate | Washington State | 1993 | 1950 | |
| 1 | Washington | Maria Cantwell | Democratic | U.S. House (WA-1) | Miami University | 2001 | 1958 |
[edit] Election, selection and family
Prior to 2001, numerically speaking, the most common way for a woman to ascend to the U.S. Senate was to have been appointed there following the death or resignation of a husband or father who previously held the seat. An example is Muriel Humphrey (D-MN), the widow of former Senator and U.S. Vice President Hubert Humphrey; she was appointed to fill his seat until a special election was held (in which she did not run). However, with the election of three women in 2001, the balance shifted: More women have now entered service as a U.S. Senator by winning their seats outright than by being appointed to the body.[citation needed]
Recent examples of selection include Jean Carnahan and Lisa Murkowski. In 2000, Jean Carnahan (D-MO) was appointed to fill the Senate seat won by her dead husband, Mel Carnahan. Carnahan—even though dead—defeated the incumbent Senator, John Ashcroft. Carnahan's widow, was named to fill his seat by Missouri Governor Roger Wilson until a special election was held. However, she lost the subsequent 2002 election to fill out the rest of the six-year term. In 2002, Lisa Murkowski (R-AK) was appointed by her father Alaska Governor Frank Murkowski, who had resigned from the Senate to become governor, to serve the remaining two years of his term. Lisa Murkowski defeated former governor Tony Knowles in her reelection bid in 2004.
Two current members of the Senate bring with them a combination of name recognition resulting from the political careers of their famous husbands and their own substantial experience in public affairs. The first, Senator Elizabeth Dole (R-NC), is married to former Senate Majority Leader and 1996 Republican presidential candidate Bob Dole and served as Secretary of Transportation under President Ronald Reagan, served as Secretary of Labor under President George H. W. Bush, and later ran a losing bid for the Republican presidential nomination in 2000. The other, Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-NY) is a former First Lady of the United States, former First Lady of Arkansas, and the former Chair of the National Legal Services Corporation and of the Children's Defense Fund.
Another famous name is Nancy Landon Kassebaum Baker. Better known by her married name from her first marriage (Kassebaum). She is the daughter of former Kansas governor and one-time presidential candidate Alf Landon. After retiring from the Senate, she married former Senator Howard Baker (R-TN). Kassebaum has the distinction of being the first female Senator to be elected to the Senate with no previous Congressional experience who had not succeeded a dead husband in his seat. Her three terms in the Senate mark her time there as the third-longest tenure for a woman in the Senate after Margaret Chase Smith and Barbara Mikulski.
[edit] Distinctions held by certain female Senators
Senator Olympia Snowe (R-ME) arrived in the Senate in 1995, having previously served in the House of Representatives and both houses of the Maine state legislature. She and Debbie Stabenow of Michigan are the only women (it is rare even for male politicians) to serve in both houses of a state legislature and both houses of the federal legislature.
Senator Margaret Chase Smith (R-ME) holds several distinctions for women in the U.S. Congress: She served the Senate (to date) longer than any woman has (24 years); she was the first woman ever elected to both the U.S. House and Senate (she was first elected to the House in 1940 after the unexpected death of her husband, who himself was a member of the House of Representatives, and served there for eight years before winning the Senate seat by a landslide); she was the first woman to hold a Senate Leadership position; and she also won her 1960 race for Senate in the nation's first ever race pitting two women against each other for a Senate seat.
In 1992, Carol Moseley Braun (D-IL) became the first woman to defeat an incumbent senator when she toppled Senator Alan Dixon in the Democratic primary. Later that year, Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) was the first woman to defeat an incumbent senator from a different party when she defeated appointed Senator John Seymour in a special election. Kay Bailey Hutchison (R-TX) duplicated Feinstein's feat in 1993, toppling appointed Senator Bob Krueger in a special election. In 2000, Stabenow (D-MI) and Maria Cantwell (D-WA) became the first women to defeat incumbent elected senators in a general election, unseating Senators Spencer Abraham and Slade Gorton respectively. In 2006, Claire McCaskill (D-MO) became the third by defeating Senator Jim Talent.
[edit] First concurrent service
The first female U.S. Senators from a single state to serve concurrently were Dianne Feinstein and Barbara Boxer (both D-CA), both elected in 1992, with Feinstein taking office that same year (as the result of a special election) and Boxer taking office in 1993.
[edit] Statistics by state
Twenty-two states have been represented by female Senators. No state has been represented by female Senators from more than one party.
- Louisiana - 3
- Maine - 3
- Alabama - 2
- Arkansas - 2
- California - 2
- Kansas - 2
- Minnesota - 2
- Missouri - 2
- Nebraska - 2
- South Dakota - 2
- Washington - 2
- Alaska - 1
- Florida - 1
- Georgia - 1
- Illinois - 1
- Maryland - 1
- Michigan - 1
- New York - 1
- North Carolina - 1
- North Dakota - 1
- Oregon - 1
- Texas - 1
[edit] List of female U.S. Senators
[edit] Timeline of female U.S. Senators (1922-present)
