WASHINGTON (Gray DC) – In 1916, Jeannette Rankin became the first woman ever elected to Congress. Since then over 300 women have served in these halls. A number many current women senators believe should be much greater.
These are just five of the twenty women that are part of the current US Senate.
“It’s a good group of women and I think we all take our job seriously,” Nebraska Senator Deb Fisher (R- NE) said.
They’re mothers, grandmothers, sisters and Senators that are balancing their day-to-day home-lives, while balancing a budget and entire states on their shoulders.
“You know we’ve got a lot on our plate, we’re taking care of the kids the family the job the house ourselves and we want to be efficient with our time and we want to work things out and I think that’s what you see reflected in the Congress,” West Virginia Shelley Moore Capito (R-WV) said.
They believe the proof is in the numbers. Quorum, an online legislative strategy platform, took their curiosity to the database. Here was what they found.
“Female legislators are more effective. They get more bills at least in the Senate. They introduce more bills, they get more bills out of committee and they get more bills enacted,” Cofounder Jonathan Marks said.
According to the firm, the average female Senator introduced more than 96 bills over the last seven years while their average male senator only introduced an average of 70 bills. A trait these women are very proud of.
“I think against a lot of tough odds a lot of times when you look behind the successes in the Senate there’s going to be women leadership,” North Dakota Senator Heidi Heitkamp (D-ND) said.
So what if there were more women in Congress?
“We will be better governed when our legislative bodies look more like America,” Wisconsin Senator Tammy Baldwin (D-WI) added.
Michigan Senator Debbie Stabenow added, “more women, the more we’ll get things done.”
The women senators have dinners together once a month. They said the only catch is that there is no press, no cameras, and no agendas; just a group of friends chatting over some good food. They said they never miss a month.