One hundred fifty women serve in the 119th Congress — about 28 percent of the 535 voting seats — per the Center for American Women and Politics at Rutgers University, the benchmark count of women in U.S. office. That figure, set when the Congress convened in January 2025, is a record share. It is also a share that has moved in single digits over the past decade, which is the more telling number for anyone tracking whether representation is actually compounding.
How are the 150 seats split?
Per CAWP's Congress tracker, the January 2025 count broke down as 125 women in the House — 94 Democrats and 31 Republicans — and 25 in the Senate, with 110 Democrats and 40 Republicans overall. The running total fluctuates through a two-year session as members resign, take office elsewhere, and are replaced through special elections and appointments; CAWP's live tracker has shown the figure drifting upward into the low 150s during this Congress. The all-time high for voting members, per CAWP, is 152.
Is 28 percent good by historical standards?
It is the high-water mark, and the trend line is real: women were under 20 percent of Congress as recently as the 2010s. But the pace is the caveat. The Congressional Research Service, which publishes the periodic report on women in Congress, has documented a pattern of record-setting by inches — each new Congress adds a handful of seats. At this rate, parity is decades away, not cycles.
| Chamber | Women seated (Jan 2025) | Share of chamber |
|---|---|---|
| House | 125 | about 29 percent |
| Senate | 25 | 25 percent |
| Total | 150 | about 28 percent |
Why does the party split matter?
The 110-to-40 Democratic edge shapes which districts elect women and which committees they chair. Republican women's gains in recent cycles came disproportionately through open seats rather than defeats of incumbents, per CAWP analyses. For women considering a run, the practical lesson from CAWP's data is that the pipeline decision — filing at all — is where the record gets set.
What should readers watch for the rest of 2026?
Special-election results shift the count monthly, so the live CAWP tracker, not any single news story, is the number to cite. The midterm filing landscape will determine whether the next record arrives in 2027. The deeper measure CAWP tracks is the pipeline: statewide offices and state legislatures, where roughly a third of seats nationally are now held by women.
