ABSTRACT
Throughout the 1990s, women made significant strides competing for and winning seats in the United States Congress. The 1992 elections, often referred to as the "Year of the Woman," resulted in an historic increase in the number of women in both the House of Representatives and the Senate. 1 These increases were an encouraging improvement in efforts to move toward some semblance of gender parity in our political institutions. After all, in the history of the House of Representatives, there have been roughly 11,500 male representatives, but fewer than 200 female representatives (CAWP 2003). Recent congressional elections, however, indicate that women's progress is beginning to stagnate. The 2002 elections marked the first time since 1994 that women did not increase their presence in Congress. Currently, 86 percent of the members of the U.S. Senate and 86 percent of the members of the U.S. House are male. 2 This places the United States fiftyninth worldwide in terms of the number of women serving in the national legislature, a ranking far behind many other democratic governments (Inter-Parliamentary Union 2003).
