The House has seen slow but steady growth in the number of women members since the 1920s, when women gained the right to vote. Just as in the previous Congress, four states – Minnesota, Nevada, New Hampshire and Washington – have all-female Senate delegations. Republican Katie Britt, who became the first elected woman senator from Alabama. The Senate gained just one new female member: In the Senate, 25 women are currently serving, tying the record number of seats they held in the 116th Congress. With Balint’s election, all 50 states have now had female representation in U.S. That figure includes 22 newly elected congresswomen, including Becca Balint, a Vermont Democrat who became the first woman and first openly LGBTQ person elected to Congress from the state. territories, four of whom are women.)Ī record 128 women are currently serving in the House, making up 29% of the chamber’s membership. The number of women in Congress is at an all-time high. A little more than a century after Republican Jeannette Rankin of Montana became the first woman elected to Congress, there are 153 women in the national legislature, accounting for 28% of all members. (This includes six nonvoting House members who represent the District of Columbia and U.S. Non-Hispanic White Americans account for 75% of voting members in the new Congress, considerably more than their 59% share of the U.S. By comparison, when the 79th Congress took office in 1945, non-White lawmakers represented just 1% of the House and Senate combined.ĭespite this growing racial and ethnic diversity, Congress remains less diverse than the nation as a whole. Together, these lawmakers make up a quarter of Congress, including 28% of the House of Representatives and 12% of the Senate. The 118th Congress is the most racially and ethnically diverse in history. Overall, 133 lawmakers identify as Black, Hispanic, Asian American, American Indian, Alaska Native or multiracial. The analysis of women in Congress, however, is based on nonvoting as well as voting members. Nearly all findings in this analysis are based on voting members of Congress and exclude nonvoting members. For information about the sourcing and methodology of these studies, follow the links in the text of this analysis.

It is based on previously published studies by the Center.

This Pew Research Center analysis examines the changing demographic profile of Congress over time.

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