In the past decade, women have achieved near parity with men among Democratic state legislators. Women remain less than a quarter of all Republican state legislators. From 2016 to 2025, women have increased their representation in state legislatures by almost ten percentage points (24.4% to 33.5%). Women are now nearly 50% of all Democratic state legislators...

The historic elections of former U.S. Representative Abigail Spanberger as the first woman governor of Virginia and Virginia State Senator Ghazala Hashmi as the first Muslim woman elected to a statewide position (lieutenant governor) in the country tell only part of the story about the remarkable electoral gains posted by Democratic women in last week’s...