Record number of Democratic women headed to U.S. Senate for 113th Congress

Exact­ly two decades after the 1992 pres­i­den­tial elec­tion, some­times called the “year of the woman” or “year of the women”, the Amer­i­can peo­ple have made his­to­ry by elect­ing a record num­ber of female can­di­dates to the nation’s upper leg­isla­tive cham­ber. Near­ly all of them are Democrats.

Vot­ers enthu­si­as­ti­cal­ly reelect­ed Sen­a­tors Maria Cantwell of Wash­ing­ton, Kris­ten Gilli­brand of New York, Claire McCaskill of Mis­souri, Deb­bie Stabenow of Michi­gan, Amy Klobuchar of Min­neso­ta, and Dianne Fein­stein of California.

Join­ing them in 2013 will be new group of Demo­c­ra­t­ic women: Eliz­a­beth War­ren of Mass­a­chu­setts, Mazie Hirono of Hawaii, Tam­my Bald­win of Wis­con­sin, and Hei­di Heitkamp of North Dakota.

Repub­li­cans, mean­while, have par­tial­ly off­set the retire­ments of Olympia Snowe in Maine and Kay Bai­ley Hutchi­son of Texas with Deb Fis­cher’s vic­to­ry in Nebras­ka. Fis­ch­er will join a Repub­li­can cau­cus with three return­ing women sen­a­tors: Susan Collins of Maine (not up for elec­tion this year), Kel­ly Ayotte of New Hamp­shire, and Lisa Murkows­ki of Alas­ka. (Murkows­ki is tech­ni­cal­ly an inde­pen­dent; she won reelec­tion as a write-in can­di­date, but cau­cus­es with Republicans).

The Demo­c­ra­t­ic cau­cus will have four times as many women sen­a­tors. There are six Demo­c­ra­t­ic women serv­ing in the U.S. Sen­ate who were not up for reelec­tion this year: Our own Pat­ty Mur­ray, Bar­bara Box­er of Cal­i­for­nia, Bar­bara Mikul­s­ki of Mary­land, Mary Lan­drieu of Louisiana, Jeanne Sha­heen of New Hamp­shire, and Kay Hagan of North Car­oli­na. Togeth­er with the ten Demo­c­ra­t­ic women elect­ed or reelect­ed tonight, they will make a group of sixteen.

We are still a ways away from hav­ing a Con­gress that looks like the Unit­ed States of Amer­i­ca, and does the pub­lic’s busi­ness in pub­lic. But as of this Jan­u­ary, for the first time, one fifth of the mem­bers of the U.S. Sen­ate will be women.

That’s an impor­tant mile­stone for our democracy.

Insti­tu­tions — whether they be pub­lic or pri­vate — func­tion bet­ter when the lead­er­ship is diverse. Last July, Bloomberg observed that com­pa­nies with women on their boards out­per­form com­pa­nies that are run almost exclu­sive­ly by old white guys. The U.S. Sen­ate will cer­tain­ly ben­e­fit from the pres­ence of strong women lead­ers like Eliz­a­beth War­ren, Mazie Hirono, and Tam­my Baldwin.

We look for­ward to see­ing them get to work in our nation’s capital.