Number of women who are state lawmakers inches up to a record high

Women will for the first time make up a majority of state legislators in Colorado and New Mexico next year, but at least 13 states saw losses in female representation after the November election, according to a count released Thursday by the Rutgers Center for American Women and Politics.

While women will fill a record number of state legislative seats in 2025, the overall uptick will be slight, filling about a third of legislative seats. Races in some states are still being called.

“We certainly would like to see a faster rate of change and more significant increases in each election cycle to get us to a place where parity in state legislatures is less novel and more normal,” said Kelly Dittmar, director of research at the CAWP, which is a unit of the Eagleton Institute of Politics at Rutgers University.