After years of hiring fewer and fewer women, Congress is finally reversing course.
This term, women make up 51.2 percent of staffers in the House and 50.3 percent in the Senate. In the 115th Congress, women made up 49.0 percent and 50.7 percent of House and Senate aides, respectively.
While that number has increased since last term, both chambers had more women on their payrolls a decade ago. The House reached its highest percentage of women - 51.5 percent - in the 111th Congress; the Senate's proportion peaked in the 108th at 52.9 percent. In the following years, both chambers experienced a gradual decline in the number of female staffers before hitting the House's low of 48.8 percent in the 114th and the Senate's low of 49.0 percent in the 115th.
While the overall increase in women is partly due to this term's larger number of Democratic members, who hire tend to hire more women than do their GOP counterparts, the trend also holds true among the Republican Party.
LegiStorm has complete data on congressional staff from 2001 forward.
