The 2024 election will mark the first since 2016 that women did not see a net gain in congressional representation. No more than 151 women will serve in January 2025, the same that served on Election Day 2024, according to the Center for American Women and Politics at Rutgers University. When women remain so vastly underrepresented – holding just 28% of all congressional seats, stasis elections like this one postpone the progress necessary to achieve gender parity in political officeholding.
Up to 151 women will serve upon the start of the 119th Congress, depending on the result in U.S. Representative Michelle Steel’s (R–California) extremely close contest in California’s 41st congressional district. If Steel is defeated, the number of women will drop by one from Election Day 2024 to January 3, 2025. That would be just the third time in 46 years that the number of women in Congress dropped as a result of an election. Another contest in Iowa’s 1st congressional district is too close to call between two women, ensuring that at least 150 congresswomen will serve in 2025. The 119th Congress’ count for women will also fall short of the record high of 152, which was achieved on November 12, 2024 when Erica Lee Carter – daughter of former U.S. Representative Sheila Jackson Lee (D–Texas) – was sworn in to complete Lee’s unexpired term in the 118th Congress.
There is no singular cause for this stagnation in women’s congressional representation. Contributing factors likely include the drop in women’s congressional candidacies, the record number of women incumbents not running for re-election, and the fact that 2024 was not an especially successful year for Democrats. Because Democratic women continue to be over two-thirds of women on general election congressional ballots, women’s prospects for representational progress are most closely tied to Democratic trends.
Just as there is no one reason for women’s stalled progress, there are myriad reasons why it matters. Research shows that women bring distinct lived experiences and perspectives to congressional policymaking, changing not only conversations but also outcomes. Women’s presence also contributes to institutional progress by challenging deeply-rooted norms, processes, and expectations. Finally, increasing women’s representation disrupts perceptions that men are the rule and women are the exception when it comes to who can and should hold positions of political power.
And while election cycles in which men have held level or even dropped in congressional representation have still yielded their overrepresentation among officeholders, any cycle without gains for women is both a reminder of their persistent underrepresentation and a delay en route to gender parity in Congress.
Stasis is the story for women in both the U.S. House and Senate as a result of the 2024 election, though there are slightly different outcomes for women in each political party. Democratic women will see a small net increase in their congressional membership while Republican women’s representation will drop in 2025. While the drop won’t be large, any loss of Republican women’s representation is especially significant due to their stark underrepresentation among women (they are less than 30% of current congresswomen) and Republicans (they are just 16% of Republicans in Congress).
The decrease in Republican women can be attributed, in part, to their dearth of non-incumbent women winners. Of the 21 non-incumbent women congressional winners thus far in election 2024, all but two are Democrats. The addition of two new Republican congresswomen could not make up for the departures of at least four Republican women members of the U.S. House due to retirement or electoral defeat. In contrast, in a year when a record number of incumbent congresswomen—a majority of whom are Democrats—did not run for re-election and four more Democratic women incumbents were defeated, the higher number of Democratic wins was essential to offset women’s departures.
Democratic women were also much better represented among their party’s candidates and general election nominees, allowing them more opportunity for electoral gains. In U.S. House primaries, women were 37.6% of Democratic candidates. And after winning primary contests at higher rates than their male counterparts, they were 45.9% of House nominees on November 5 ballots. Republican women fared less well in primary contests, moving from just 17.6% of House candidates to 16.2% of Republican House nominees.
These partisan disparities are especially evident in the representation of women among all newcomers to the next Congress. At present, women are 50% of the non-incumbent Democratic winners of House and Senate seats and just two of 41 (4.9%) new Republicans.
This year’s outcomes for women stand in stark contrast to the gains that women made as a result of both the 2018 and 2020 elections, when record numbers of women ran for and won congressional contests. Democrats accounted for all of the net gain in women’s congressional representation in 2018, while Republicans were almost wholly responsible for women’s congressional gains in 2020. In 2022, when the number of women inched up only slightly as a result of the election, it was the net gain of two among Republican women that prevented stasis.
Amidst this year’s stasis, women still achieved notable milestones that mark progress for the diversity of women’s congressional representation. Though no racial/ethnic group of women will achieve new representational highs in the 119th Congress overall, two Black women—Lisa Blunt Rochester (D–Delaware) and Angela Alsobrooks (D–Maryland)—will for the first time serve simultaneously in the U.S. Senate; both women will also be the first Black women in the U.S. Senate from their states. Likewise, Janelle Bynum (D–Oregon) will be the first Black women to represent Oregon in Congress, Yassamin Ansari (D–Arizona) will be the first Middle Eastern/North African woman to serve in Arizona’s congressional delegation, and Nellie Pou (D–New Jersey) will be the first Latina from New Jersey to serve in Congress.
Julie Fedorchak (R–North Dakota)—one of the two new Republican congresswomen (with Sheri Biggs from South Carolina)—will become the first woman to serve in the U.S. House from North Dakota in 2025. Once Fedorchak is sworn in, Mississippi will be the only state that has never sent a woman to the U.S. House. Sarah McBride (D–Delaware) will be just the second woman to represent Delaware in the U.S. House, but she will also be the first transgender person to serve in Congress when she is sworn in next year.
These wins are a reminder that net counts are not the only indicator of success or progress for women in politics. Still, when more women run and win, the likelihood of achieving new milestones grows.
In their statement on Vice President Kamala Harris’ defeat in the presidential election, the Center for American Women and Politics wrote that “progress is not inevitable” for women in U.S. politics. That truth echoes across levels of office and is evident in this year’s congressional outcomes for women. Come January 2025, we will celebrate 21 new women taking the oath of office at the U.S. Capitol, including multiple women making history. But the flat line in women’s congressional representation between this year and next is a reminder that gender disparities in our representative democracy remain a problem in need of targeted, intentional, and sustained solutions.