Jo Freeman: With the 116th Congress the Party Gap has Become a Party Chasm

On January 3rd 132 women took the oath of office to be a Member of Congress. Included in this number are 25 Senators, 102 Representatives and 5 delegates. This is the largest number of women who have ever served in Congress at one time.

Speaker Nancy Pelosi, Democrat, California

While many have greatly lauded this great leap upward over the 112 women who were M.C.s during 115th Congress, few have noted that this gain was almost entirely among Democrats. Of the 36 women elected to the House for the first time, only one is a Republican. Of the 3 new Senators, only one is a Republican.

Since two Democratic women Senators were defeated for re-election, the number of Democratic women stayed at 17, while the number of Republican women went from 6 to 8 in the Senate. In the House Democratic women increased their presence from 64 to 91, while Republican women lost seats, going from 25 to 16.

Women are now 25 percent of both houses of Congress, but not of both parties. Women are over one-third of the Democratic Caucus in both houses (36% and 39%), 15 percent of Republicans in the Senate, and only 8 percent of Republicans in the House.

This is also true in the state legislatures. Excluding Nebraska, which has a non-partisan, unicameral legislature, women are entering 2019 as 31.2 percent of Democrats and 17.2 percent of Republicans in the state legislatures.

In the last thirty years, a party gap has developed among elected officials because the Democrats run and elect more women than do the Republicans at every level. The party gap is not the same as the gender gap — the fact that in most elections a higher percentage of women vote for the Democrats than do men — but it is just as important.

Both have grown larger, but the party gap is now a chasm.

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Jo Freeman: With the 116th Congress the Party Gap has Become a Party Chasm

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