A few weeks ago, the clerk of the South Carolina Senate called out each of the 46 members’ 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.
Voters hadn’t elected a single one to the chamber in November.
Now, after more than a decade, the Senate’s Republican caucus is once again an all-men’s 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’s 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.
Women aren’t represented much more on the other side of the Statehouse. Female lawmakers make up just 10% of South Carolina House Republicans.
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 — its voters added a single net Republican woman to their legislature.
Most of the region’s legislatures were woefully short of women’s 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’s health and well-being.
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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’s statehouses — 7,386 legislative seats — women gained 43 seats in November’s elections. Only four were Democrats, although Democratic women still hold almost twice as many seats overall.
But the gains of Republican women weren’t mirrored in the Southeast. The losses weren’t huge, 1 to 3 Republican women per legislature. But with small numbers to begin with, losing just one can make a big difference.
“It has a much more significant effect on the potential for particular voices and lived experiences to be raised in debate and conversation,” 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’s political participation.
Dittmar didn’t see this trend in other regions. “There’s not one story,” she said, “but rather a lot of unique state-based stories.”
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