PHILADELPHIA (KYW Newsradio) — Congress has seen ongoing gains for female candidates in recent election years, and the 2024 election promises to show that number continue to increase.
According to the Center for American Women in Politics at Rutgers, for the remainder of the 118th Congress, which ends on Jan. 3, 2025, there will be 152 women serving between both legislative chambers, breaking the previous record of 151 in 2023.
Deborah Walsh, the center’s director, says that new record comes with the swearing in of U.S. Rep. Erica Lee Carter of Texas, to fill the House seat held by her late mother, Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee.
Following the 2024 election, “we will have at least 149 women serving,” she said, “but there are a number of outstanding races. So at the most, we anticipate that there could be 154 women serving.”
Democratic women are expected to maintain their positions, but Walsh says Republican women may lose ground overall, especially in the House.
“Elise Stefanik, Republican congresswoman from New York, has been tapped to be the new U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations,” she said. “If confirmed, she would be resigning, so Republican women would be down an additional member.”
Walsh says voters should keep an eye on the midterm elections in 2026. After Donald Trump was elected in 2016, there was a surge in women's participation and activism, and it was almost exclusively on the Democratic side in response to Trump’s election, she said.
“In 2018, that midterm election, we saw 36 new women elected, in addition to the incumbents who were re-elected. That was the largest incoming class of women to the U.S. House that we had ever seen. Of those 36, 35 were Democrats.”
Women’s representation in the 119th Congress is still not fully determined, as seven races with female candidates remain too close to call. But Walsh says this was, in many ways, a status quo election.