Number of women who are state lawmakers inches up to a record high
Associated Press
Women will for the first time make up a majority of state legislators in Colorado and New Mexico next year, but at least 13 states saw losses in female representation after the November election, according to a count released Thursday by the Rutgers Center for American Women and Politics.
While women will fill a record number of state legislative seats in 2025, the overall uptick will be slight, filling about a third of legislative seats. Races in some states are still being called.
“We certainly would like to see a faster rate of change and more significant increases in each election cycle to get us to a place where parity in state legislatures is less novel and more normal,” said Kelly Dittmar, director of research at the CAWP, which is a unit of the Eagleton Institute of Politics at Rutgers University.
As of Wednesday, at least 2,450 women will serve in state legislatures, representing 33.2% of the seats nationwide. The previous record was set in 2024 with 2,431 women, according to the CAWP.
The number of Republican women, at least 851, will break the previous record of 815 state lawmakers set in 2024.
“But still, Republican women are very underrepresented compared to Democratic women,” Debbie Walsh, director of the CAWP, said.
States that gained women in legislatures
By the most recent count, 19 states will have increased the number of women in their state legislatures, according to the CAWP. The most notable increases were in New Mexico and Colorado where women will for the first time make up a majority of lawmakers.
In New Mexico, voters sent an 11 additional women to the chambers. Colorado had previously attained gender parity in 2023 and is set to tip over to a slight female majority in the upcoming year.
The states follow Nevada, which was the first in the country to see a female majority in the legislature following elections in 2018. Next year, women will make up almost 62% of state lawmakers in Nevada, far exceeding parity.
Women in California’s Senate will make up the chamber’s majority for the first time in 2025 as well. Women also made notable gains in South Dakota, increasing its total number by at least nine.
States that lost women in legislatures
At least thirteen states emerged from the election with fewer female lawmakers than before, with the most significant loss occurring in South Carolina.
Earlier this year, the only three Republican women in the South Carolina Senate lost their primaries after they stopped a total abortion ban from passing. Next year, only two women, who are Democrats, will be in the 46-member Senate.
No other state in the country will have fewer women in its upper chamber, according to the CAWP. Women make up 55% of the state’s registered voters.
Half the members in the GOP dominated state were elected in 2012 or before, so it will likely be the 2040s before any Republican woman elected in the future can rise to leadership or a committee chairmanship in the chamber, which doles out leadership positions based on seniority.
A net loss of five women in the legislature means they will make up only about 13% of South Carolina’s lawmakers, making the state the second lowest in the country for female representation. Only West Virginia has a smaller proportion of women in the legislature.
West Virginia stands to lose one more women from its legislative ranks, furthering its representation problem in the legislature where women will make up just 11% of lawmakers.
Why it matters
Many women, lawmakers and experts say that women’s voices are needed in discussions on policy especially at a time when state government is at its most powerful in decades.
Walsh, director of the CAWP, said the new changes expected from the Trump administration will turn even more policy and regulation to the states. The experiences and perspectives women offer will be increasingly needed, she said, especially on topics related to reproductive rights, healthcare, education and childcare.
“The states may have to pick up where the federal government may, in fact, be walking away,” Walsh said. “And so who serves in those institutions is more important now than ever.”
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This version corrects the approximate total of women in state legislatures nationside to be about a third.
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