A few weeks ago, the clerk of the South Carolina Senate called out the names of each of the 46 members and then ordered them all to stand and raise their right hands. He had to swear them in at the new session. There was not a single woman among the supermajority of Republicans.
In November, voters did not elect a single deputy to the chamber.
Now, more than a decade later, the Senate Republican caucus has once again become an all-male club that will make decisions on issues that directly affect women: abortion, in vitro fertilization and Medicaid coverage of lactation specialiststo name a few. In November’s election, only two women were elected to the entire chamber, and both are Democrats. Given that Republicans control what legislation moves forward, neither will have much power.
Women are not represented much more on the other side of the Statehouse. Female representatives make up only 10% of Republicans in the South Carolina House of Representatives.
Similar post-election stories are unfolding in the Southeast, a region long defined by traditional culture and conservative politics. All but one state held on legislative elections Republican women died in this region last fall, including Georgia, North Carolina, Arkansas and South Carolina. Tennessee was the only exception, with its voters adding one Republican woman to its legislature.
In most of the region’s legislatures, women were severely under-represented even before the elections, as reported by ProPublica this time last year. Women make up less than 1 in 5 state legislators across much of the Southeast, where most states consistently rank last on nearly every measure of women’s health and well-being.
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Across the country, female lawmakers increased again in 2024. One third state legislators across the country are women, the largest number in history. Across the country’s 7,386 state legislatures, women won 43 seats in November’s elections. Only four were Democrats, though Democratic women still hold nearly twice as many seats.
But the gains of Republican women were not mirrored in the Southeast. The losses were not great, 1 to 3 female Republicans per legislature. But with small numbers, the loss of just one can make a big difference.
“It has a much more significant impact on the possibility of certain voices and lived experiences emerging in debates and conversations,” said Kelly Dittmar, political science professor and director of research at the Center for American Women and Politics at Rutgers University. a key group that tracks the participation of women in political life.
Dietmar has not seen this trend in other regions. “There’s not just one story here,” she said, “but quite a few unique state stories.”
The center is estimated to have closed in mid-December, with South Dakota and New Hampshire electing significantly more new women. Wisconsin lost 6 female Republicans and added 11 female Democrats. Connecticut lost 5 female Republicans, while Democrats held steady. Maine lost 5 Democrats but gained 4 Republicans. In California, women from both parties won seats.
“We’ve seen a lot of progress across the country for women in the legislature, but the Southeast continues to be a real struggle,” said Sabrina Shulman, chief political officer of Vote Run Lead, a campaign that trains women to run for office. Established gender roles still influence voting decisions, and Republicans who are more traditionally oriented — male and female — tend to see men as stronger, more qualified, and more capable of governing.
Dittmar added that President Donald Trump’s campaign emphasized masculinity, which had a trickle-down effect. Republican voters appeared to prefer candidates, including women, who were perceived as more masculine or at least not “anti-male,” she said.
Some Republican women who might have considered running for office also opted out of campaigning in the hyper-masculine politics of the moment. The Center on American Women and Politics found that the number of women running for state legislative seats fell across the board, but the biggest drop was among Republican women.
Unlike Democrats, Republicans have “largely rejected any attempt to target, recruit, train and finance women candidates,” Dittmar said. “Conservatives are still predominantly white and male. The party is made up of people who don’t see it as a problem” that there are so few women in the legislature.
All three Republican women in South Carolina’s Senate have lost their reelection race after they joined forces with two other women — one Democrat and one independent — in the chamber to fight against a strict abortion ban. National headlines covered a bipartisan group called the Sisters of senators.
Senator Katrina Shealy was the highest-ranking of the three and the only female chair of a standing committee in the Senate. When she won her first Senate election in 2012, she arrived in Columbia, the state capital, in an all-male Senate. After more than ten years, she leaves him like this again.
However, when she was first elected, female leaders were emerging in public politics. Then-lip. Nikki Haley was a key ally. The Chief Justice of the State Supreme Court was a woman. Now the governor is a man again. Also the president of the Senate. And the speaker of the House of Representatives. And the chief judge. State Supreme Court there were no men if this is supported current abortion law in 2023; he recently added a single female justice.
“I think if men could take away women’s right to vote, they would,” Shealy said. “Just look at South Carolina and what we’ve done. We don’t want women to have a vote in anything. It’s obvious.”
In the South Carolina statehouse, Shelley was widely known as a top legislative champion for children. She blames her defeat in the primary on low voter turnout and the fact that Republican women in her home state still often adhere to traditional gender roles.
“Women in the Republican Party always put themselves in the position that we need to support our men,” Shealy said. “They allow themselves to be subservient to men, especially in the South.”
She wonders how much they realize that men are now the sole decision-makers on issues that concern women, particularly reproductive health care. South Carolina now has a six-week abortion ban, but the conservative wing of the House of Representatives is banned prepared the bill in advance which would have banned abortion from the moment of conception, or basically what Shelley and other female senators oppose. The authors of the bill were three women and 29 men. If it moves to the Senate, not a single Republican debating the restrictions — or voting on them — will be a woman.
