DATA POINT: With New Addition, Record Number of Women in Senate and Mississippi Sends First Woman to Congress

The arrival of Mississippi’s new U.S. Senator, Cindy Hyde-Smith (R), brings the total number of women in the Senate to 23, a new record. There are now 17 Democrats and 6 Republicans among the Senate women. The previous high for women in the U.S. Senate was 22, reached in January 2018.

This will not mark a new high for the number of women in the U.S. Congress overall due to the recent death of Representative Louise Slaughter (D-NY). Women remain just under 20% of all members of Congress (19.8%); 106 women (78D, 28R) serve in Congress today.*

The data on women in the Senate were compiled by the Center for American Women and Politics, a unit of the Eagleton Institute of Politics at Rutgers University-New Brunswick.

Hyde-Smith will be the first woman to represent the state of Mississippi in Congress. As of 2018, just two states had never sent a woman to Congress: Mississippi and Vermont. While Vermont is now the only state where no woman has ever served in its congressional delegation, there are currently 11 states that have no female representation in Congress.

 Hyde-Smith is the 52nd woman ever to serve in the Senate; there have been 34 Democrats and 18 Republicans. The first woman to serve in the Senate was Rebecca Latimer Felton (D-GA), who, in a symbolic move, was appointed to fill a vacancy caused by death and served just one day in 1922, resigning when her successor was sworn in. The first woman ever to win election to the Senate was Hattie Wyatt Caraway (D-AR), who was appointed to fill the vacancy caused by the death of her husband in 1931 and then won an election to complete his term, along with two subsequent terms, before losing her bid for re-election in 1944.

The first woman elected to the Senate without first filling a Senate vacancy was Margaret Chase Smith (R-ME), who filled the House vacancy caused by her husband’s death and served four full terms there before running for the Senate, where she was elected to four terms (1949-1973) before losing a re-election race. The first woman elected to the Senate in her own right, without having first filled any congressional vacancy, was Nancy Landon Kassebaum (R-KS), who served from 1978-1997.

From the time the first woman entered the Senate, no more than one woman served at a time until the 74th Congress (1935-37), and no more than two served together until the 102nd Congress (1991-93). The first time there were more than 10 female senators was in the 107th Congress (2001-03), and the total reached 20 in the 113th Congress (2013-15). Details about the history of women in the Senate can be found here.

*This number does not include non-voting delegates in the House.