Vox, November 6, 2018: The first year every state sent a women to Congress, in one mapÂ
Vermont still hasn’t.
A record number of women have already dominated elections this year — from Virginia to Michigan to California — and they could be the key to Democratic success on Election Day.
Over time, the number of women in Congress has ebbed and flowed, with spikes in the 1950s, the 1970s, and a major surge in the early 1990s. The optics of the hearings when Hill testified in front of an all-white, all-male Senate Judiciary panel were particularly stark, prompting many women including the eventual Sens. Patty Murray (D-WA) and Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) to run, historian Michele Swers said.
Some states may have lagged behind others in part because they have smaller delegations and fewer opportunities for women to break into these roles, Dittmar said. Vermont, the only state that has yet to elect or appoint a woman to Congress, has just three members in its delegation, for example. All three members have also been serving in those roles for at least a decade.
Today, women’s representation in Congress still clocks in at just 20 percent of the overall body, but it has changed and grown significantly in recent decades.
