Women made up 53 percent of the total electorate who cast ballots on November 6. They gave 55 percent of their votes to Barack Obama, enabling the president to overcome a seven percentage point deficit among male voters. Married women preferred Romney by seven percentage points but two thirds of all unmarried women voted for the president.
In January, there will be a record 20 women in the U.S. Senate, a gain of three. Elizabeth Warren in Massachusetts and Tammy Baldwin in Wisconsin are the first women to be elected to the U.S. Senate from their states.
In New Hampshire, women now hold both U.S. Senate seats, both seats in the U.S. House of Representatives, and the governor’s office. This is the first time in U.S. history that women have controlled the entire congressional delegation and the governor’s office in any state. There are still 23 states in the union that have never elected a woman as governor.
In election results relating to women in higher education, Senator-elect Elizabeth Warren has been serving as a professor at Harvard Law School. Shirley Weber, professor and chair of the department of Africana studies at San Diego State University, was elected to the California State Assembly.