Women in state legislatures from the gilded age to the global age

State-to-state differences in women's state legislative representation since the passage of the Nineteenth Amendment are as vast as over-time differences have been. This chapter focuses on women elected to state legislatures from the first, in 1894, to those serving in 2017. The paper highlights the slow growth in women legislators until about 1973, the twenty years of relatively rapid growth until 1993, and the slower increases since then. The chapter explores the impact of institutional factors, party, and geography on this growth and examines the differences between women's membership in the lower and upper houses. A pooled time series analysis reveals factors explaining differences in women's membership in legislative bodies across states and through time.