As of April 2025, 151 (110D, 41R) women serve in the U.S. Congress, holding 28.2% of all seats; 125 (94D, 31R) women serve in the U.S. House and 26 (16D, 10R) women serve in the U.S. Senate. In addition, 4 (2D, 2R) women serve as non-voting delegates to the U.S. House. These numbers reflect change not only resulting from election 2024 but also from congressional turnover since January 2025.

As a result of the election, the number of women in the U.S. Congress decreased by one (from 151 to 150) from Election Day 2024 to January 2025, with a net loss of one woman in the U.S. House (from 126 to 125) and no change in the U.S. Senate (25). The number of Democratic congresswomen increased by three overall (from 107 to 110), including a net gain of two in the House (from 92 to 94) and a net gain of one in the Senate (from 15 to 16) from Election Day 2024 to the beginning of the 119th Congress (2025-2027).1 The number of Republican women decreased by three overall (from 43 to 40), with a net drop of three in the House (from 34 to 31) and no change in the Senate (9).

The changes in the numbers of women in Congress from Election Day 2024 to the start of the new Congress are also evident in their representation within each party. As of January 3, 2025, women were 14.7% of the Republican members of the 119th Congress, a slight drop from their representation (16%) among congressional Republicans as of Election Day 2024. Democratic women’s representation among Democratic members increased slightly from 41.3% on Election Day 2024 to 42.3% at the beginning of the 119th Congress. Women continue to be significantly better represented among Democrats than Republicans in Congress, especially in the U.S. House.

Election 2024 marked the first time since 2010 that the number of women in Congress dropped as a result of a regular election. While women’s congressional representation did not change as a result of the 2016 election, women made net gains of varying sizes as a result of elections 2018 (+19), 2020 (+16), and 2022 (+2). While there is neither a single nor definitive reason for the relative stasis in women’s congressional representation in this election cycle, there are multiple factors that likely contributed to this outcome.

First, women did not run for and win nomination to the U.S. Congress in record numbers in 2024. In fact, the number of women candidates – within and across both parties and chambers – dropped from 2022 to 2024. The number of women nominees was nearly equal between 2022 and 2024 in both the House and Senate, with Democratic women nominees up and Republican women nominees down from the previous cycle.2 The drop in women’s congressional candidacies was mirrored by men, indicating that this decline was not distinctly gendered. Republican candidate counts decreased more than Democratic counts, and Republicans saw larger differences between women and men House candidates. Republican women’s candidacies dropped the most of any group by gender and party.

Second, the departure of 19 (14D, 5R) House and 3 (2D, 1R) Senate women incumbents due to retirement, running for another office, or primary or general election defeat contributed to the relative stasis of women in Congress. In order to see net gains in women’s representation within and across chambers, the number of non-incumbent women winners had to exceed these counts.

Finally, additional factors that could contribute to a decline in women’s candidacies include strategic calculations, electoral opportunity, toxicity in politics, and targeted recruitment and support. Potential candidates may opt out of a campaign if they expect the political environment to be particularly unfriendly to them or their party. Relatedly, if there are fewer electoral opportunities than previous cycles – whether real (i.e. open seats) or perceived (i.e. competitive seats) – the number of candidates is likely to decline. Even where opportunities exist, however, the toxicity of the political environment can dissuade individuals from wanting to run for or serve in political office, and recent evidence demonstrates the distinct types of harassment and abuse faced by women and people of color candidates and officeholders. Lastly, while much of the work to recruit and support women candidates continued in 2024, the broader public attention to and mobilization around addressing gender and racial disparities in elected leadership appeared to wane in comparison to recent cycles. While Kamala Harris’ nomination spurred greater attention to these disparities, it came too late in the cycle to significantly impact candidacies below the presidential level. Targeted efforts and attention to gender inequalities in candidacy and officeholding have been critical to gains in women’s representation for decades.

Despite these factors that likely dampened women’s congressional gains, women still marked multiple milestones and successes in the 2024 election. Moreover, the new women in Congress contribute to the overall diversity of congressional representation and demonstrate the lasting effects of women’s activation and electoral engagement since 2016.

House of Representatives

The number of women who filed as candidates for the U.S. House dropped by nearly 20% between 2022 and 2024, from a record high of 583 in 2022 to 467 women House candidates in 2024. The numbers of both Republican and Democratic women decreased from 2022 to 2024, though the drop in Republican women House candidates (-95, -36.4%) was larger than Democratic women’s decline (-21, -6.5%) in both raw number and percentage. The number of women nominees – those appearing on the general election ballot – was nearly identical between 2022 (260) and 2024 (259).3 While the number of Republican women House nominees dropped by 14 (-17%) between 2022 and 2024, the number of Democratic women nominees increased by 13 (+7.3%) across cycles. Democratic women remained – as in previous cycles – the majority of women candidates (64.5%) and nominees (73.7%) for the U.S. House in election 2024.

Notably, the decline in women’s House candidacies is not entirely gendered; both Democratic (-8.3%) and Republican (-18.7%) men saw a decline in House candidacies from 2022 to 2024, and the overall drop in Republican House candidates (-22.5%) was greater than the drop in Democratic House candidates (-7.5%). While the percentage drop in Democratic House candidates was similar between Democratic women (-6.5%) and men (-8.3%), the percentage decline in Republican women’s House candidacies (-36.4%) was larger than the drop among Republican men (-18.7%).

The drop in women nominees for the U.S. House, which was – as noted above – attributable to a net drop in Republican women nominees, indicates a gendered pattern that varies by party; the number of Democratic women House nominees increased from 2022 to 2024 (+7.3%), while the number of Democratic men nominees declined by 4.6%. In contrast, the number of Republican men House nominees increased from 2022 to 2024 (+2.6%), while the number of Republican women nominees dropped by 17.1%.

Across parties, women fell short of parity with men as U.S. House candidates, nominees, and winners in 2024. Women were 26.8% of candidates who filed to run for the U.S. House and were 31% all nominees. Women were 28.7% of House winners. Republican women made up a smaller proportion of their party’s candidates, nominees, and winners for the U.S. House than did Democratic women in 2024, consistent with previous cycles. In 2024, women were 37.6% of Democratic and 17.6% of Republican candidates. The party disparity grew by the nomination stage, where women were 45.8% of Democratic and 16.3% of Republican nominees.

Another indicator of the persistent dominance of men among U.S. House nominees is the occurrence of all-male general election contests. Of the 435 U.S. House contests in election 2024, just under half (206) pitted two men against each other or were contests where men ran unopposed. In contrast, less than ten percent (38) of House contests pitted two women against each other or were contests where women ran unopposed.

Gender and partisan disparities are notable among non-incumbent winners of general election contests in 2024, especially in comparison to recent election cycles. In the 2020 election, 43.8% of all non-incumbent winners of U.S. House seats were women, nearing gender parity; in fact, women were the majority (60%) of Democratic and 38.8% of Republican non-incumbent House winners. Those numbers dropped significantly in 2022 and did not rebound in 2024. In 2024, women were 26.1% of non-incumbent House winners overall, including 47.1% of Democratic and just 5.7% of Republican non-incumbent winners. The partisan gap in women’s representation among House newcomers was larger in 2024 than in both 2020 and 2022.

The freshman class of women in the House of Representatives in the 119th Congress is the sixth-largest ever, with 18 (16D, 2R) non-incumbent women elected as voting members in 2024.4 The largest freshman class of women emerged from the 2018 election, when 36 (35D, 1R) non-incumbent women were elected. The second and third-largest classes of non-incumbent House women came in 2020 (28 [9D, 19R]) and 1992 (24 [21D, 3R]), respectively. In the 119th Congress, a large majority (88.9%) of freshman House women are Democrats.

Of the 18 new women serving in the House, 11 (61.1%) previously served as state legislators. Perhaps more notably, more than half (10) of the newly-elected women in the U.S. House were first elected or appointed to state legislative office since the 2016 election, suggesting that the increase in women’s success at the state legislative level from 2016 to today has had important implications for women’s representation at higher levels of office.

Republican non-incumbent women nominees for the U.S. House won at a lower rate than non-incumbent Republican men, Democratic men, and Democratic women in 2024, consistent with 2022 but in contrast to the 2020 election when they outperformed each of these groups. And while there was a gender difference in House non-incumbent nominee win rates among Republicans, Democratic non-incumbent women and men nominees fared equally well in general election contests.

While the freshman class of women in the 119th House is relatively large in historic terms, the gains by non-incumbent women winners were offset by the departures of incumbent House women in the 2024 election. In total, 19 (14D, 5R) women House incumbents in the 118th Congress did not return to the House in 2025. This includes 13 (10D, 3R) incumbent women who retired or ran for other offices, 1 (1D) woman incumbent who was defeated in her primary contest, and 5 (3D, 2R) women incumbents who were defeated in the general election.5

Of the 6 (4D, 2R) incumbent House women who were defeated in primary or general election contests in 2024, just one was defeated by another woman. Janelle Bynum (D) defeated first-term incumbent Lori Chavez-DeRemer (R) in Oregon’s 5th Congressional District. Five of six House incumbent women defeated in 2024 elections are from historically-marginalized racial and ethnic communities.

Racial/Ethnic Diversity

No racial/ethnic group of women reached new representational highs in the U.S. House as a result of the 2024 election. With no changes in women’s U.S. House representation since the start of the 119th Congress, 27 (27D) Black, 18 (14D, 4R) Latina/Hispanic, 7 (6D, 1R) Asian American/Pacific Islander, 1 (1D) Native American, 2 (2D) Middle Eastern/North African (MENA), and 73 (45D, 28R) white women serve as voting members as of April 2025.6 The numbers of Latina/Hispanic and MENA women in the House match previous highs, while women in all other racial/ethnic groups fell below previous records as a result of the election.

Among the 18 freshman women members of the 119th House are:

• 2 (2D) Black women, including the first Black woman sent to Congress from Oregon — Representative Janelle Bynum (D-OR);
• 3 (3D) Latina/Hispanic women, including the first Latina/Hispanic woman sent to Congress from New Jersey — Representative Nellie Pou (D-NJ);
• 1 (1D) Middle Eastern/North African (MENA) woman, who is the first MENA woman sent to Congress from Arizona — Representative Yassamin Ansari (D-AZ); and
• 12 (10D, 2R) white women.

No non-incumbent Asian American/Pacific Islander or Native women were elected to the U.S. House in 2024.

The racial/ethnic diversity among women in the U.S. House differs by party, with greater diversity among Democratic than Republican women officeholders (see breakdown in charts below). This partisan disparity has been consistent throughout history, with 90.8% of all Republican women who have served in the U.S. House identifying as white alone in contrast to 63.4% of Democratic women representatives. That contrast persists in the 119th Congress.

The number of women House candidates fell short of previous highs within every racial/ethnic group – within and across political parties – in 2024.

The number of women House nominees fell short of previous highs in nearly every racial/ethnic group – within and across political parties – in 2024. The number of Democratic white women nominees for the U.S. House (124) marked a record high and the two Republican MENA women nominees marked the highest count in that group since CAWP began tracking MENA identification in 2018.

Differences by State

The number of women in states’ U.S. House delegations went up in seven states, went down in seven states, and stayed the same in 36 states as a result of the 2024 election. Democratic women gained U.S. House seats in eight states and lost seats in seven states. Republican women gained seats in two states and lost seats in five states as a result of election 2024.

Nine states have no women representing them in the U.S. House in the 119th Congress: Alaska, Arkansas, Idaho, Kentucky, Mississippi, Montana, Nebraska, Rhode Island, and South Dakota. These states represent 9 of 10 states that had no women serving in the U.S. House at the end of the 118th Congress. Maryland and North Dakota both elected new women to serve in the U.S. House in 2025, up from zero in 2024, while Alaska lost its representation of women in the House. North Dakota elected its first woman ever to the U.S. House (and to Congress) in the 2024 election. Mississippi remains the only state that has never sent a woman to the U.S. House.

Senate

In 2024, 50 (29D, 21R) women filed as candidates for the U.S. Senate, down from the record high 70 women Senate candidates in 2022.7 This is the lowest number of women candidates for the U.S. Senate since 2016, when 40 women ran. Three (2D, 1R) incumbent women senators did not run for re-election in 2024; Senators Kyrsten Sinema (I-AZ) and Debbie Stabenow (D-MI) chose not to run for re-election, and Senator Laphonza Butler (D-CA) – who was appointed to fill a vacancy in October 2023 – made good on her promise not to seek a full term in 2024.

The partisan differences evident in House candidacies persisted in the Senate; the decrease in women’s U.S. Senate candidacies was larger for Republican (-44.7%) than Democratic (-9.4%) women from 2022 to 2024. The number of women Senate nominees (21) fell short of the record high 23 set in 2018 but increased by one from 2022 to 2024. Democratic women nominees matched the record high while the number of Republican women nominees was the lowest since election 2016.

Like in the U.S. House, men in both parties also saw drops in Senate candidates from 2022 to 2024. Across groups, Democratic women saw the smallest (-9.4%) and Republican women saw the largest (-44.7%) percentage drop in Senate candidacies from 2022 to 2024.

The change in Senate nominees by gender between 2022 and 2024 diverged by party. The number of Democratic women Senate nominees increased by two from 2022 to 2024, while the number of Democratic men Senate nominees dropped by three. Among Republicans, the numbers of both women and men Senate nominees dropped from 2022 to 2024.

Across parties, women fell short of parity with men as U.S. Senate candidates, nominees, and winners in 2024. Women were 23.4% of candidates who filed to run for the U.S. Senate and were 30.9% of all nominees. Women were 35.3% of Senate winners. Republican women made up a smaller proportion of their party’s candidates, nominees, and winners for the U.S. Senate than did Democratic women in 2024. In 2024, women were 33.3% of Democratic and 16.8% of Republican candidates. The party disparity grew by the nomination stage, where women were 46.9% of Democratic and 17.6% of Republican nominees.

Of the 34 U.S. Senate general election contests in election 2024, more than half (18) pitted a man against a woman. Among the remaining 16 contests, a large majority (14) pitted two men against each other in the general election while just two Senate contests featured only women nominees.

Three non-incumbent women – Angela Alsobrooks (D-MD), Lisa Blunt Rochester (D-DE), and Elissa Slotkin (D-MI) – won U.S. Senate contests in the 2024 election. This is the highest number of new women Senators since 2018, when 3 (2D, 1R) non-incumbent women were elected. In 2025, women represent three of 12 (25%) new senators and three of six (50%) new Democratic senators. Two non-incumbent women winners – Lisa Blunt Rochester and Elissa Slotkin – previously served in the U.S. House. In addition to these newly-elected women senators, Ashley Moody (R-FL) was appointed to the U.S. Senate to fill a vacancy on January 21, 2025.

Non-incumbent women nominees for the U.S. Senate won at a slightly lower rate than non-incumbent men in the 2024 election overall, but Democratic women fared better than their male counterparts while Republican men outperformed Republican women.

All incumbent women senators who ran for re-election in 2024 were successful, despite competitive contests in multiple states.

Racial and Ethnic Diversity

Of the 26 (16D, 10R) women who serve in the U.S. Senate in the 119th Congress, 2 (2D) are Asian American/Pacific Islander, 2 (2D) are Black, 1 (1D) is Latina/Hispanic, and 21 (11D, 10R) are white. These counts include Senator Ashley Moody (R-FL), who was appointed on January 21, 2025. With the election of Lisa Blunt Rochester (D-DE) and Angela Alsobrooks (D-MD), this marks the first time that more than one Black woman has served in the U.S. Senate at one time. No Middle Eastern/North African or Native American/Alaska Native/Native Hawaiian women have served in the U.S. Senate.

All of the Republican women in the U.S. Senate – both in 2025 and historically – are white, while 68.8% of Democratic women senators in 2025 and 80% of Democratic women senators who have ever served are white.

A record number of Latina/Hispanic women (4), Democrat Latina/Hispanic women (4), and Republican Asian American/Pacific Islander women (2) were candidates for the U.S. Senate in 2024. No other counts for women Senate candidates by race/ethnicity and party marked new highs in 2024.

The number of women Senate nominees either matched or fell short of record highs within every racial/ethnic group – within and across political parties – in 2024.

Differences by State

Delaware and Maryland are the two states that added women to their Senate delegations as a result of the 2024 election. Upon Senator Ashley Moody’s appointment on January 21, 2025, Florida also went from zero to one woman in its U.S. Senate delegation. In total, 22 states have at least one woman representing them in the U.S. Senate in the 119th Congress, including four states whose Senate delegations are all women: Minnesota, New Hampshire, Nevada, and Washington. Of the 28 states that currently have no women in their Senate delegations, 16 have never sent a woman to the U.S. Senate: Colorado, Connecticut, Idaho, Indiana, Kentucky, Montana, New Jersey, New Mexico, Ohio, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, South Carolina, Utah, Vermont, and Virginia.

Looking Ahead

The relative stasis in women’s congressional representation as a result of the 2024 election, as well as the continued underrepresentation of women in both the U.S. House and U.S. Senate, should serve as a reminder that the work to achieve gender parity in congressional politics is not done. As we look ahead to the 2026 election, we will be watching to see what motivates women to run for office as well as the support infrastructures (both internal and external to political parties and specific to groups of women by race/ethnicity, party, age, or other identities and affiliations) that exist to set women candidates and nominees up for success through Election Day. Before then, women may draw on these supports to compete in congressional special elections to the U.S. House in Arizona and Texas. Lastly, the 2024 election showed how losing women incumbents can significantly stall women’s representational progress. In 2026, 8 (2D, 6R) incumbent women senators are up for election; already, two – Jeanne Shaheen (D-NH) and Tina Smith (D-MN) – have announced that they will not run for re-election. In continuing work to advance women’s political power and representation, we must be attentive to the hurdles to retention for incumbent women officeholders and address those hurdles with recognition of the full range of diversity among women – and specifically, the diversity of their political experiences and opportunities – in U.S. political institutions.