The number of women serving as state legislators is at a record high

Next year, women in Colorado and New Mexico will make up the majority of state legislatures for the first time, but at least 13 states reported losses in female representation after November elections, according to a count released Thursday by the Rutgers Center for American Women emerges politics.

While women will hold a record number of state legislative seats in 2025, the overall increase will be slight, filling just over a third of legislative seats. Races are still being called in some states.

“We would definitely like to see a faster rate of change and more significant gains each election cycle to get to a point where parity in state legislatures is less new and more normal,” said Kelly Dittmar, research director at CAWP . This is a unit of the Eagleton Institute of Politics at Rutgers University.

As of Wednesday, at least 2,451 women will serve in state legislatures, accounting for 33.2% of seats nationwide. The previous record was set in 2024 with 2,431 women, according to CAWP.

The number of Republican women will reach at least 852, breaking the previous record of 815 state legislators set in 2024.

“But Republican women are still grossly underrepresented compared to Democratic women,” said Debbie Walsh, director of the CAWP.

States that brought women into the legislature

According to the CAWP, the number of women in their state legislatures will have increased in 19 states as of the latest count. The most significant gains were in New Mexico and Colorado, where women will make up the majority of lawmakers for the first time.

In New Mexico, voters sent 11 additional women to the chambers. Colorado had already achieved gender parity in 2023 and is expected to tip over to a slight female majority next year.

The states follow Nevada, which became the first in the country to have a female majority in the legislature after the 2018 election. Next year, women will make up nearly 62% of Nevada’s state legislators, well above parity.

Women will also make up the majority in the California Senate for the first time in 2025. In South Dakota, women also made notable gains, increasing their total number by at least nine.

States that have lost women in parliaments

At least thirteen states emerged with fewer female representatives than before, with the largest loss in South Carolina.

Earlier this year, the only three Republican women in the South Carolina Senate lost their primary elections after blocking passage of a total abortion ban. Next year, there will only be two Democrats in the 46-member Senate.

According to CAWP, no other state in the country will have fewer women in the upper house. Fifty-five percent of the state’s registered voters are women.

Half of the members in the Republican Party-dominated state were elected in 2012 or earlier. Therefore, it will likely be the 2040s before a future elected Republican woman can achieve a leadership or committee chair position in the chamber, which awards leadership positions based on seniority.

A net loss of five women in the Legislature means they will only make up about 13% of South Carolina’s representatives, making the state the second lowest in the country for female representation. Only West Virginia has a lower percentage of women in the legislature.

West Virginia is expected to lose another woman from its legislative ranks, exacerbating its representation problem in the Legislature, where women will make up just 11% of lawmakers.

Why it matters

Many women, lawmakers and experts say women’s voices are needed in political discussions, especially at a time when the state government is the most powerful in decades.

Walsh, CAWP director, said the new changes expected from the Trump administration would shift policy and regulation even more into the hands of states. The experiences and perspectives that women offer are increasingly needed, she said, particularly on issues related to reproductive rights, health care, education and child care.

“States may have to pick up where the federal government might actually give up,” Walsh said. “And that’s why it’s more important now than ever who serves in these institutions.”

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