Has the number of women in Congress hit a ceiling?

After several election cycles of progress in expanding the number of women in Congress, and following a record-breaking cycle for female governors, the 2024 election saw this progress stall, as gains in some areas balanced out losses in others. The number of women who will serve in Congress and governorships mostly held steady, though a slight decline in women elected to the House was the unsurprising outcome of a lackluster showing by women in this year's Republican primaries, marking an end to the growth in female GOP representation from 2018 through 2022.

Overall, 150 women are set to serve in the 119th Congress starting next year, down just slightly from the current record of 152 (which represents 28 percent of all members). As has long been the case though, there are sharp partisan imbalances here: 42 percent of incoming Democratic members and just 15 percent of incoming Republican members are women. And based on this year's results, that imbalance doesn't appear to be narrowing, particularly as female candidates within the Republican Party face persistent structural and cultural barriers to running and winning.

One more female governor brings the total to 13

There are currently a record number of female governors serving simultaneously across the U.S. — a total of 12. Remarkably, all of these women were either elected or reelected in a banner 2022 cycle, when women won 12 of the 36 gubernatorial contests on the ballot. Following the 2024 election, that record will increase to 13, as Kelly Ayotte is set to be New Hampshire's next governor.

This cycle, just 11 states had governor's races, and of these, only four featured women (Indiana, Vermont, Missouri and New Hampshire). In New Hampshire, both major-party candidates were women, so either way a woman would win there — and help break the record for the most women serving simultaneously as governor at one time. In the other three states, the women running faced long odds — each was a Democrat in a race that the Republican candidate won comfortably.

While there are 18 states that have yet to have a female governor, New Hampshire isn't one of them. Ayotte will be the fourth female governor to serve in her state. That too is nearly a record. The only other state to have had more than four female governors is Arizona (which has had five, including the current governor, Katie Hobbs). All told, counting Ayotte, just 50 women have ever served as governors in the U.S, and of these, 60 percent are Democrats, including eight of the 12 women currently serving.

Women's gains in holding office as governors have been relatively slow, and the reasons are multifaceted. Historically, governorships have been seen as steppingstones to the presidency, creating stiff competition for these top posts. Statewide executive offices are also uniquely challenging for women, as they often require substantial fundraising and local name recognition — areas where female candidates frequently face disadvantages due to gender biases in donor networks and media coverage.

And when it comes to the party disparity, Republican women in particular face significant hurdles in securing their party's nomination, as the GOP has been less likely to prioritize gender diversity in leadership than Democrats. This was on display this cycle in Indiana, where sitting Lt. Gov. Suzanne Crouch ran for the Republican nomination and was arguably a natural successor to retiring Gov. Eric Holcomb. However, Holcomb didn't see it that way, declining to endorse in the primary, and Sen. Mike Braun ended up winning the party's nomination. In that crowded and competitive primary race, Donald Trump's endorsement of Braun arguably made him a clear front-runner.

Fewer women in Congress in 2025

Twenty-five women are set to serve in the Senate come January, including three newcomers — Democrats Angela Alsobrooks of Maryland, Lisa Blunt Rochester of Delaware and Elissa Slotkin of Michigan. That will match the previous record of 25 women serving at the end of a session, in the 116th Congress (2019-2021).* It'll break a couple of other records too: With the election of Alsobrooks and Blunt Rochester, two Black women will serve simultaneously in the U.S. Senate for the first time in its history. And Blunt Rochester will be the first woman to represent Delaware in the Senate. With fewer seats than the House, and longer terms between elections, opportunities for women to run and win Senate seats are rarer. This helps explain why 16 other states still have not had a female senator.

In the House, the number of women serving is set to decrease (albeit slightly) for the first time since the 102nd Congress, which began in 1991. Democrats will set a new record for women's representation in the chamber with a total of 94 Democratic women elected to the 119th Congress, up from 93 currently serving (the previous record). But the number of Republican women in Congress will decline from 34 to 31 members, after two cycles of growth. This suggests that Democrats are at least maintaining their gains following a surge in Democratic women's representation in 2018, while Republicans may be losing steam when it comes to electing women, losing some ground after they more than tripled their numbers in the 2020 cycle.

Behind Democratic women's modest gain of one seat, a few incumbent Democratic women in competitive races (those that our forecast rated as "Toss-up" or "Lean" before the election) came up short: Reps. Yadira Caraveo in Colorado, Susan Wild in Pennsylvania and Mary Peltola in Alaska. But a couple of female Democratic challengers won their races that were projected to be close: Janelle Bynum in Oregon (who flipped this seat from Republican Rep. Lori Chavez-DeRemer), and Kristen McDonald Rivet in Michigan (a critical hold after Democratic Rep. Dan Kildee's retirement).

For their part, all four Republican women running in these competitive races were incumbents. Two lost (Chavez-DeRemer and California Rep. Michelle Steel) and two won (Reps. Jen Kiggans in Virginia and Mariannette Miller-Meeks in Iowa). No non-incumbent GOP women ran in these races — a change from the party's previous efforts to nominate women in highly competitive districts, which helped fuel the surge of GOP women who won in the 2020 election cycle.

In less competitive races (which make up the vast majority of House contests), the differences between the two parties were even more stark. On the Democratic side, a host of non-incumbent women won in safely blue seats where sitting Democrats had announced their retirement, like Maggie Goodlander in New Hampshire and Laura Friedman and Lateefah Simon in California. But on the Republican side, as we wrote about in September, women were most underrepresented as nominees in safely red seats where they had the best chances of being elected.

That's reflected in the partisan breakdown of the non-incumbent women who will be joining Congress. According to the Center for American Women in Politics, of the 21 women newly elected to Congress, just two are Republican. In fact, our analysis in September found that these two candidates — Julie Fedorchak in North Dakota and Sheri Biggs in South Carolina — were their party's only non-incumbent female nominees in safe Republican races. This year's outcome was the likely result of a primary cycle where Republicans nominated fewer women overall, and hardly any women in races where they were favored or competitive.

Has women's representation stalled out?

After a few cycles of notable progress in expanding women's ranks in both Congress and governorships, the 2024 election represented a plateau. Unless both parties commit to electing more women to Congress and governorships, progress toward gender parity in political representation will remain slow and uneven. But it's particularly clear that a lot would need to change for Republican women to gain back their previous momentum, and the party's stagnation on this front underscores the role partisan dynamics play in limiting gender parity in government.

Republican women continue to face several distinct challenges that Democratic women do not. For one, research from Brigham Young University shows that Republican voters are more likely to penalize candidates — regardless of gender — who present themselves in traditionally feminine ways. This creates a compounded disadvantage for conservative women, who are more likely to campaign in ways that reinforce gender stereotypes. And as we've written about previously, Democratic organizations have made more concerted efforts to promote female candidates, while Republican women often struggle to obtain institutional backing — as was true of some conventionally qualified Republican women who lost to men endorsed by Trump or the NRCC in this year's primaries.

Republicans also have fewer women in on-deck circles, like state legislatures. Following the 2024 cycle, more women than ever will serve in state legislatures, where they'll make up around a third of the seats nationwide. At this level too, Democrats are electing many more women than Republicans (around 1,600 to Republicans' 850, according to ABC News), though Republicans did elect more women this cycle than the last (their previous record was 815). But in today's political environment, this could prove less consequential for women's representation at higher levels. Historically, experience in state legislatures has served as a springboard for higher offices, like Congress. That said, a recent trend of more amateurs (candidates with no previous political experience) running and winning elected office could mean alternative paths to office will be a more fruitful avenue for increasing representation, but whether Republican women will walk those paths with equal ease is an open question.

Footnote

*The all-time record for women serving simultaneously in the Senate was actually set at 26 earlier in the 116th Congress, during the period after Kelly Loeffler (a Republican appointed to fill a vacant seat in Georgia) took office in January 2020 and before fellow appointee Martha McSally (a Republican from Arizona) left office in December 2020 after losing a special election.