Where Does Your State Rank for Women’s Representation?

According to the Center for American Women and Politics (CAWP), a unit of the Eagleton Institute of Politics at Rutgers University, the top three states for women’s representation in state legislatures in 2025 are Nevada (61.9%), New Mexico (53.6%), and Colorado (51%). Meanwhile, CAWP’s annual rankings of states shows that the bottom three states this year are West Virginia (11.2%), South Carolina (12.9%), and Mississippi (14.9%).

Learn more about women’s representation in state legislatures, and find out where your state ranks, at our Women in State Legislatures 2025 fact sheet. See how your state has ranked over time and its rank change in 2025 via our State-by-State Information page. In addition, CAWP experts have updated our Women as a Percentage of Democratic and Republican State Legislators fact sheet, which shows how women are represented as a proportion of their party in each state legislature. In 2025, women are at or beyond parity among Democratic legislators in 29 states. Women are at or beyond parity among Republican legislators in zero states.

 “A significant obstacle facing women’s representation now is partisan disparity. Nearly two-thirds of all women state legislators are Democrats, and Democratic women are nearing or exceeding parity among their state legislative caucuses while Republican women lag far behind,” said CAWP Director Debbie Walsh. “We see reverberations of this obstacle in our rankings. The top states for women’s representation are largely controlled by the Democratic party, while the bottom states are exclusively Republican controlled. Because state legislatures are launching pads for higher office, this disparity has implications for GOP women holding office at the statewide and federal level.”

There are currently three states where the legislature is majority women: Nevada, New Mexico, and Colorado. Nevada is the only state where both chambers of the legislature are also majority women. There are three state senates and four state houses that are majority women: the Arizona Senate, the California Senate, the Nevada Senate, the Alaska House, the Colorado House, the Nevada House, and the New Mexico House.

Find out more about women serving in state legislatures in 2025, including current numbers, comparisons to previous years, and party breakdowns, at our Women in State Legislatures 2025 fact sheet. This page will be updated with additional information about women in state legislative leadership and race/ethnicity data for women in state legislatures as that data is collected. See how your state has ranked over time and its rank change in 2025 via our State-by-State Information page. Discover how women are represented within their political parties with our Women as a Percentage of Democratic and Republican State Legislators fact sheet.