State Legislature

Women in State Legislatures 2025

Women in State Legislative Leadership 2025

Women as a Percentage of Democratic and Republican State Legislators

State-by-state data on women as a percentage of Democratic and Republican state legislators.

Representativeness of Women State Legislators by Race/Ethnicity and State

State-by-state data on women’s state legislative representation by race/ethnicity compared to women’s representation in the population by race/ethnicity.  

Fact Sheet Archive on Women in State Legislatures (1977-present)

Women in State Legislative Elections: Historical State-by-State Summary

Historical information on women in State Legislative elections by state.

  • CAWP Recruitment Studies Datasets

    The 2008 Center for American Women and Politics (CAWP) Recruitment Studies are studies of United States state legislators' and mayors' pathways to office that were conducted by the Center for American Women and Politics (CAWP) at the Eagleton Institute of Politics at Rutgers University. Data about state legislators and mayors of big cities were gathered through survey instruments that consisted primarily of questions concerning the decision to seek office, previous political experience, and personal background. The studies, which were conducted by mail, web, and phone, were designed to replicate a 1981 CAWP study about gender and pathways to

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  • Gender Backlash in American Politics?

    by Kira Sanbonmatsu
    Politics and Gender (September 2006) 

    The author introduces the idea of a backlash against women's representation, proposes several preliminary hypotheses about a backlash, and discusses ways of testing them.

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  • “Committee Assignments: Discrimination or Choice?”

    by Susan J. Carroll
    Book chapter in Legislative Women: Getting Elected, Getting Ahead, edited by Beth Reingold, 2008

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  • Commentary on Emmy E. Werner's 1968 Article, "Women in the State Legislatures"

    by Susan J. Carroll
    Political Research Quarterly (March 2008)

    This commentary examines the contributions of Emmy W. Werner's classic 1968 article to the study of women and politics and to knowledge about women in state legislatures, placing the article in the context of its time and highlighting its continuing relevance.
     

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