Good morning, Broadsheet readers! Women could be key to fixing the trade labor shortage, an all-women crew of pilots will make history at the Super Bowl, and Republicans made more strides in the 2022 election, even post-Roe. Happy Friday, and enjoy your weekend!
- Right-wing women. When the Supreme Court overturned women’s right to an abortion, pundits galore predicted that it would mobilize more liberal women. Now that the dust has settled after the 2022 midterm elections, it is conservative women who seem to be emerging stronger.
Across the board, female representation at federal and state levels of government has broken records, marking progress for women in politics. According to a 2022 post-mortem compiled by the Center for American Women and Politics at Rutgers University, women serving in the U.S. Congress have reached a new high, with 149 women holding office. Of them, 106 are Democrats, 42 are Republicans, and one is independent.
The number of women serving as governor has also hit a record of 12, with Arkansas, Massachusetts, and New York electing women to the role for the first time last year.
For years, Democrats have led Republicans in women's representation. That remains the case, especially in the U.S. Congress, but 2022 data shows Republicans are slowly closing the gap. In 2019, there were 106 Democratic women and just 20 Republican women. This year, seats held by Republicans have more than doubled to 42 while the number of Democratic women is still at 106. The number of Republican women who ran for office and who won has increased since 2019. Meanwhile, those numbers for Democratic women have also plateaued, according to CAWP.
The CAWP report tackles one question raised by these figures: Why did the Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization decision overturning Roe v. Wade not catapult more pro-choice women—namely Democrats—to office last year, when we know it motived pro-choice women to vote?
The answer—at least in part—is a matter of timing. The Dobbs decision arrived in late June after most candidate filing deadlines had passed. The report says we may actually see Dobbs's full effect—on both sides of the aisle—in "future election cycles."
For the time being, Democrats haven't rallied the party around abortion rights as a coalescing issue. Party leaders struggled with their initial reaction to the Dobbs decision and in Tuesday's State of the Union address President Joe Biden mentioned the word abortion only once.
Kinsey Crowley
kinsey.crowley@fortune.com
@kinseycrowley
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