New Hampshire: First All-Female Congressional Delegation

New Hampshire elected Democrats Ann McLane Kuster and Carol Shea-Porter to the U.S. House of Representatives, and they will join U.S. Senators Jeanne Shaheen, a Democrat, and Kelly Ayotte, a Republican. New Hampshire is the first state to be represented by all women.

The people of New Hampshire also elected Maggie Hassan as governor, who is the second woman elected to the state’s top position. The first was Jeanne Shaheen, who served from 1997 to 2003.

Breakthrough: 20 Women in the U.S. Senate

With the number of women serving in the U.S. Senate plateaued for years, voters elected 5 new women to join the 15 remaining in January 2013. AT 20–it is the highest number ever.

The new Senators are: Democrats Elizabeth Warren from Massachusetts (who crushed the incumbent), Rep. Tammy Baldwin (the first open lesbian to serve in the Senate) from Wisconsin, Democratic Rep. Mazie Hirono from Hawaii (becoming the first Asian-American woman elected to the Senate and the Senate’s first Buddhist), and former North Dakota Attorney General Heidi Heitkamp, and Republican Nebraska state legislator Deb Fischer.

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Interesting sidenote: Hirono defeated former governor Linda Lingle, Hawaii”s first woman governor. Continue reading »

Year of the Woman–Revisited After 20 Years

By Karen Tumulty, WAshingon Post: Updated: Saturday, March 24, 3:20 PM

“At a moment when gender politics is thick in the air, it is a good time to reconsider another online slots spring, exactly 20 years ago, when an unprecedented wave of women set their sights on Washington.

That was the election that was supposed to change everything. But it didn’t — not on the scale once expected.”
See the article at:

Twenty Years on year of the woman fades