U.S. Senate Has Come A Long Way

This past summer, the nine women in the U.S. Senate published a book they co-wrote, “Nine and Counting: The Women of the Senate.” The women senators reflected a diversity of age and political beliefs but they agreed that their presence allowed new issues to be considered on the Senate floor, such as child care, homemaker retirement accounts and domestic violence. The women said that when they were young girls, none imagined ever growing up to be a senator because few women had ever made it to the Senate. They hoped their book would inspire some young girls of today to consider careers in public service.

And now, there are 13 women in the Senate, an unprecedented number. The news of this historic moment got a bit buried beneath the struggle to elect a president, but it’s historic just the same. A look back in history shows how significant. According to Senate statistics, only 27 women have ever served there. The first, Rebecca Latimer Felton of Georgia, spent two days in the Senate in 1922, appointed to fill a short vacancy. The first women actually elected was Hattie Wyatt Caraway of Arkansas. She was appointed to the seat left vacant when her husband died and then ran for the position in her own right. She served for 15 years, from 1931 to 1945, but had little company from other women.

The decades passed and if two women served in the Senate at the same time it was considered a big deal, because usually, one lone female toiled there. In 1985, both political parties planned ways to help that number increase. Many liberal democrats supported a group called EMILY’s List, which provided money to women candidates. Republicans understood that good women candidates needed to get experience and have financial and emotional support in local, regional and state races.

In the past 15 years, society has changed, too. Women have assumed greater roles in the workplace and in government, showing they can hold their own in places where once only men dared to tread - places such as the U.S. Senate.

And now there are 13 women - 10 Democrats, three Republicans. They will not be perfect senators just because they are women. And they will not be terrible senators just because they are women. Like their male colleagues, they will triumph as well as mess up. The important fact is that they are finally there. The population is more than 50 percent women and although 13 percent is far from half, the door is now open for other women hoping to run and win Senate seats.

Thirteen and counting …