Einar H. Dyvik
Research expert covering Nordics and global data for society, economy, and politics
Women in politics in the U.S. - statistics & facts
A record number of women were elected to federal and state office in the 2024 elections, making the 119th Congress the most diverse in U.S. history. Women have been historically under-represented in the country’s governing bodies, and while significant progress has been made in the last decades, the U.S. trails behind many similarly developed and less developed nations. As of 2024, the U.S. was outranked by 42 other countries in the global Gender Parity Index - an index that benchmarks national gender gaps on political, economic, and social criteria. 
Madame President?
Famously, a woman has never held the title of President of the United States. Hillary Clinton came closest in 2016, becoming the first woman to win a presidential nomination by a major political party. Clinton ultimately lost to Donald Trump in the presidential election. After Clinton’s historic defeat, seven women ran for the top job in 2020 – the highest number of women ever to run for president and more than three times as many as in 2024. While the presidential glass ceiling is yet to be shattered for women in the United States, a 2024 poll found that 94 percent of Americans would be willing to vote for a woman for president. Despite the slow growth of women’s representation in government, more than 90 percent of Americans across all age groups are optimistic that there will be a female president within the current decade.Gender in Congress
While women made up more than half of the U.S. inhabitants, they only made up about 28 percent of Congress in 2025. In the Senate, 26 of the 100 members were women in 2025, a slight increase from the last years. Of the women in the 2025 Senate, 16 belonged to the Democratic Party, and ten to the Republican Party. In the same year, women occupied 28.7 percent of the 435 seats in the House of Representatives. This is a sharp increase from 2017 when the share of women in the House was 19.1 percent. Of the 125 women in the 2025 sitting of the House, 94 belong to the Democratic Party and 31 to the Republican Party. From 2007 to 2011 and from 2019 to 2023, Nancy Pelosi served as Speaker of the House - the first ever woman to hold the position.Making in-roads at the local level
Women have been making significant strides at the local level in recent years. In 2018, around 25.4 percent of state legislature seats were held by women. By 2025, the share had increased to 33.4 percent of seats. There are now three states that have at least 50 percent of seats occupied by women in the state legislature, Nevada, New Mexico, and Colorado. Nevada was the first state to reach gender parity in 2019, increasing women’s share of representation to almost 62 percent in 2025. There are an additional 12 states in which the share exceeds 40 percent including Washington, Vermont, Florida, California, and Alaska. While the share of women in U.S. politics is the highest ever recorded, some experts say that at the current rate, it could take more than 80 years to reach gender parity in the country’s legislative body.
