{"id":98,"date":"2026-05-22T11:47:00","date_gmt":"2026-05-22T11:47:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/movingservicesamerica.com\/?p=98"},"modified":"2026-05-22T11:47:00","modified_gmt":"2026-05-22T11:47:00","slug":"women-made-electoral-gains-in-statehouses-across-the-country-in-2024-the-southeast-is-a-different-story","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/movingservicesamerica.com\/?p=98","title":{"rendered":"Women Made Electoral Gains in Statehouses Across the Country in 2024. The Southeast Is a Different Story."},"content":{"rendered":"
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A few weeks ago, the clerk of the South Carolina Senate called out each of the 46 members\u2019 names, then directed them all to stand and raise their right hands. He needed to swear them in for the new session. Among the supermajority of Republicans, zero women stood.<\/p>

Read more North Dakota Sued the Interior Department at Least Five Times Under Gov. Doug Burgum. Now He\u2019s Set to Run the Agency.<\/a><\/p>\n

Voters hadn\u2019t elected a single one to the chamber in November.<\/p>\n

Now, after more than a decade, the Senate\u2019s Republican caucus is once again an all-men\u2019s club, one that will make decisions about issues that directly affect women: abortion, in vitro fertilization and Medicaid coverage of lactation specialists, to name a few. November\u2019s election ushered in only two women to serve in the entire chamber, and both are Democrats. Given Republicans control what legislation moves forward, neither will wield much power.<\/p>\n

Women aren\u2019t represented much more on the other side of the Statehouse. Female lawmakers make up just 10% of South Carolina House Republicans.<\/p>\n

Similar postelection stories are playing out across the Southeast, a region long defined by traditional culture and conservative politics. All but one state that held legislative elections last fall in this region saw losses of Republican women, including Georgia, North Carolina, Arkansas and South Carolina. Tennessee was the lone exception \u2014 its voters added a single net Republican woman to their legislature.<\/p>\n

Most of the region\u2019s legislatures were woefully short of women\u2019s representation even before the election, as ProPublica reported at this time last year. Women constitute fewer than 1 in 5 state legislators across much of the Southeast, where most states consistently rank at the bottom of virtually all measures of women\u2019s health and well-being.<\/p>\n

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Across the country, 2024 again saw gains for female lawmakers. One-third of state legislators nationwide are women, the most in history. In all of the country\u2019s statehouses \u2014 7,386 legislative seats \u2014 women gained 43 seats in November\u2019s elections. Only four were Democrats, although Democratic women still hold almost twice as many seats overall.<\/p>\n

But the gains of Republican women weren\u2019t mirrored in the Southeast. The losses weren\u2019t huge, 1 to 3 Republican women per legislature. But with small numbers to begin with, losing just one can make a big difference.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt has a much more significant effect on the potential for particular voices and lived experiences to be raised in debate and conversation,\u201d said Kelly Dittmar, a political science professor and director of research at the Center for American Women and Politics at Rutgers University, a key group tracking women\u2019s political participation.<\/p>\n

Dittmar didn\u2019t see this trend in other regions. \u201cThere\u2019s not one story,\u201d she said, \u201cbut rather a lot of unique state-based stories.\u201d<\/p>\n

As of the counts the center had finished in mid-December, South Dakota and New Hampshire elected far more new women. Wisconsin lost 6 Republican women and added 11 Democratic women. Connecticut lost 5 Republican women while Democrats held steady. Maine lost 5 Democrats but gained 4 Republicans. In California, women from both parties gained seats.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe saw a lot of gains around the country for women in legislatures, but the Southeast continues to be a real struggle,\u201d said Sabrina Shulman, chief political officer at Vote Run Lead, which trains women to run for office. Entrenched gender roles still influence voting decisions, she said, and more tradition-minded Republicans \u2014 men and women \u2014 tend to see men as stronger, more qualified and able to lead.<\/p>

Read more ProPublica\u2019s Coverage of Donald Trump\u2019s Appointments \u2014 and How They Could Reshape Federal Agencies<\/a><\/p>\n

Dittmar added that President Donald Trump\u2019s campaign emphasized masculinity, which had a trickle-down effect. Republican voters seemed to prefer candidates, including female ones, who were perceived as more masculine or at least not \u201canti-male,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

Some Republican women who might have considered running also balked at campaigning in the hypermasculine politics of the moment. The Center for American Women and Politics found the number of female candidates for state legislative seats was down across the board \u2014 but the largest drop was among Republican women.<\/p>\n

Unlike Democrats, Republicans \u201chave largely rejected any attempts at targeted support, recruitment, training and funding of women candidates,\u201d Dittmar said. \u201cConservatives are still dominantly white and male. The party is made up of people who don\u2019t think it\u2019s a problem\u201d that so few lawmakers are women.<\/p>\n

All three Republican incumbent women in South Carolina\u2019s Senate lost their races after they joined with the two other women \u2014 one Democrat and one Independent \u2014 in the chamber to fight a strict abortion ban. National headlines spotlighted the bipartisan group dubbed the Sister Senators.<\/p>\n

Sen. Katrina Shealy was the most senior of the three and the Senate\u2019s only female chair of a standing committee. When she won her first Senate election in 2012, she arrived in Columbia, the state capital, to an all-male Senate. More than a decade later, she leaves it as such again.<\/p>\n

Yet, when she was first elected, female leaders had ascended across state politics. Then-Gov. Nikki Haley was a key ally. The state Supreme Court\u2019s chief justice was a woman. Now, the governor is, once again, a man. So is the Senate president. And the House speaker. And the chief justice. The state Supreme Court had no men when it upheld the current abortion law in 2023; it recently added a single female justice.<\/p>\n

\n<\/div>\n

\u201cI think if men could take the right to vote away from women, they would,\u201d Shealy said. \u201cJust look at South Carolina and what we\u2019ve done. We don\u2019t want women to have a say in anything. That\u2019s obvious.\u201d<\/p>\n

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Read More<\/h3>\n
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\nHow Many of Your State\u2019s Lawmakers Are Women? If You Live in the Southeast, It Could Be Just 1 in 5.<\/strong>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

At the South Carolina Statehouse, Shealy was widely known as the top legislative champion for children. She blames her loss in the primary on the paltry runoff turnout \u2014 but also the fact that Republican women in her home state still often adhere to traditional gender roles.<\/p>\n

\u201cWomen in the Republican Party always put themselves in the position that we need to support our men,\u201d Shealy said. \u201cThey let themselves be subservient to men, especially in the South.\u201d<\/p>\n

She wonders how much they realize that men are now exclusively making decisions about issues that specifically affect women, notably reproductive healthcare. South Carolina currently has a six-week abortion ban, but a conservative flank of House members have prefiled a bill that would ban abortions from conception, or basically what Shealy and the other female senators opposed. The bill is sponsored by three women \u2014 and 29 men. If it moves to the Senate, not a single Republican debating the restrictions \u2014 or voting on them \u2014 will be a woman.<\/p>

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All but one state that held legislative elections last fall in the Southeast saw losses of Republican women. In South Carolina, that means the Senate Republican caucus, which will make decisions that directly affect women, is an all-men\u2019s club.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":96,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[4,12],"class_list":["post-98","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-politics","tag-politics","tag-sex-and-gender"],"yoast_head":"\nWomen Made Electoral Gains in Statehouses Across the Country in 2024. The Southeast Is a Different Story. - Moving Services America<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/movingservicesamerica.com\/?p=98\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Women Made Electoral Gains in Statehouses Across the Country in 2024. The Southeast Is a Different Story. - Moving Services America\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"All but one state that held legislative elections last fall in the Southeast saw losses of Republican women. 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