S.C. Elected Women
In South Carolina S.C. voters have never sent a woman to the U.S. Senate. In the state’s history, only six women have been elected to represent South Carolina in the U.S. House of Representatives.
No S.C. woman of color has ever served in the U.S. Congress.
From 1993-2021, the S.C. delegation to the U.S. Congress was exclusively male.
Of the 46 seats in the S.C. Senate in 2021, just five are held by women: Margie Bright Matthews in District 45, Penry Gustafson in District 27, Mia McLeod in District 22; Sandy Senn in District 41, and Katrina Frye Shealy in District 23.
Of the 124 seats in the S.C. House in 2021, just 25 are held by women.
In 2021, South Carolina ranks 46th among the 50 state legislatures in the number of women elected to political office.
Ferdinan B. “Nancy” Stevenson, a Democrat, was the state’s first female lieutenant governor, serving from 1979 to 1983. Pamela Evette, a Republican, is the second. She took office on Jan. 9, 2019.
Nikki Haley, a Republican, was elected South Carolina’s first female governor in 2010, becoming the first woman of color to hold a governorship in the United States. She was re-elected in 2014. In 2017, she resigned her gubernatorial post to accept the position of U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations, where she served until January 2019.
ON THE NATIONAL SCENE
The United States has never elected a woman to the presidency. In 2016, Hillary Clinton was the Democratic Party’s nominee for U.S. president. She won the popular vote against Donald Trump, the Republican nominee, by more than 3 million votes but lost the Electoral College and thus the presidency.
Kamala Harris is the first woman to serve as Vice President of the United States. She was sworn in January 20th, 2021. She formerly served as a US Senator from California.
No women served in the U.S. Congress until 1917. The first woman to serve, Jeanette Rankin, won in 1916, when women had the vote in only 16 states. She ran as a progressive, suffragist, and pacifist in Montana. She voted against entering World War I and opened the very first debate on the House floor regarding a Constitutional amendment on woman suffrage.
In 2021, just under 27 percent of seats in the entire Congress are held by women. There are 119 women in the U.S. House of Representatives and 24 in the U.S. Senate. Even though this is an all-time high for women, the share of seats held by women serving in the U.S. Congress is well below women’s share of the overall population, 50.8 percent at the most recent census in 2010.
Of the 143 women in the 117th U.S. Congress, 49 are women of color. That includes women who are Black (23), Latina (11), Asian Pacific Islander (9), Native American (1), Middle Eastern or North African (1), or multiracial (2). Additionally, four delegates to the House (from Washington, D.C., Puerto Rico, American Samoa, and the Virgin Islands) are women of color. All but five of the 49 women serving are Democrats.
Nancy Pelosi, D-California, is the only woman to serve as Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives, first holding that post from 2009 until 2017. She was re-elected Speaker of the House in 2019 and continues to be the highest-ranking female politician in American history.
Women currently make up 33 percent of the U.S. Supreme Court, thanks to Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan, and Amy Coney Barrett.
Nine women serve as state governors in 2021. In all, only 32 have ever elected a female governor.
AROUND THE WORLD
Globally, dozens of countries – but not the United States — have elected female presidents, prime ministers, and chancellors, including Israel, Germany, Brazil, Ireland, the United Kingdom, Pakistan, Liberia, South Korea, Sri Lanka, Malta, Indonesia, and Croatia. In all, women have led fifty-eight countries since 1960.
Currently, women lead twenty countries. The diversity is impressive: for example, Norway and Denmark; Bangladesh and Singapore; Barbados and Trinidad and Tobago; New Zealand and Iceland; Serbia and Estonia. Angela Merkel has served as chancellor of Germany for almost 15 years, though will likely be succeeded by a man.
For more information, go to the Center for American Women and Politics. For global data, go to the Council on Foreign Relations’ Women’s Power Index.