119th Congress brings firsts for women of color

The 119th Congress was sworn in Jan. 3, marking several milestones for women of color. In the Senate, two Black women are serving concurrently for the first time. And in the House, two states and one U.S. territory elected their first Black, Hispanic or Pacific Islander woman lawmaker.

Overall, there are 61 women of color in the 119th Congress. Together they represent 24 states as voting members, as well as three territories and the District of Columbia as nonvoting delegates. This total includes five senators – the highest number in history – according to a Pew Research Center analysis of U.S. Senate and House records.

How we did this

This analysis is part of a long-running Pew Research Center series analyzing the demographic makeup of the U.S. Congress. It builds on an earlier Center analysis of how many states have ever elected a non-White woman to Congress. For this piece, we used the race and ethnicity categories from U.S. House and Senate historical records and CQ Roll Call.

All racial groups in this analysis refer to single-race non-Hispanics. Hispanics are of any race. The two multiracial lawmakers in this analysis are counted once in the overall total, but they are included in the counts for each of the racial and ethnic groups they identify with. Portuguese lawmakers are not counted with Hispanic members. Lawmakers of Middle Eastern and North African descent are counted with the racial group they self-identify with.

For consistency with other recent analyses of the 119th Congress’ membership, this analysis reflects the 539 voting and nonvoting members seated as of Jan. 3, 2025 – the first day of the new Congress. It does not include the Florida House seat former Rep. Matt Gaetz vacated before the term started or the Senate seat former West Virginia Gov. Jim Justice assumed Jan. 14. It excludes members seated later, notably Florida Sen. Ashley Moody, a Republican appointee sworn in Jan. 21.

Related: Women account for 28% of lawmakers in the 119th Congress – unchanged from the last Congress

This analysis is part of a long-running series of Center publications analyzing the demographic makeup of the U.S. Congress.

Thirty-one of the 61 women of color in the new Congress are Black, 19 are Hispanic and nine are Asian. Two are Pacific Islander, and Democratic Rep. Sharice Davids of Kansas is Native American. (Multiracial Rep. Marilyn Strickland, a Washington Democrat, is both Black and Asian; she is counted in both categories in this analysis, but only once in the overall total.)

The number of women of color in the new Congress is the same as it was at the start of the 118th Congress, which was sworn in January 2023. This is the first Congress in about 15 years to have a count that is not higher than the one before it.

Still, women of color have made some gains in the 119th Congress:

• This is the first Congress with two Black women senators serving at once. Freshman Democrats Angela Alsobrooks of Maryland and Lisa Blunt Rochester of Delaware are also the first Black senators of any gender to represent their states in the chamber.
• Freshman Rep. Janelle Bynum, a Democrat, is Oregon’s first Black member of Congress.
• Democratic freshman Rep. Nellie Pou is the first Hispanic woman to represent New Jersey in Congress.
• Republican Kimberlyn King-Hinds, who identifies as Pacific Islander, is the first woman delegate of the Northern Mariana Islands.

The vast majority of the women of color currently in Congress (56 of 61) are representatives or nonvoting delegates in the House. Of the five women of color in the Senate, two are Black, two are Asian American and one is Hispanic.

All but seven of these 61 women are Democrats. Among the Republicans, four are Hispanic, two are Pacific Islander and one is Asian.

Related: 119th Congress brings new growth in racial, ethnic diversity to Capitol Hill

60 years on Capitol Hill

Women of color have served in Congress for six decades. The first to do so was Democratic Hawaii Rep. Patsy Takemoto Mink, an Asian American woman who was elected in 1964. The first Black woman in Congress, Democratic Rep. Shirley Chisholm of New York, was elected in 1968. Republican Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen of Florida was the first Hispanic woman to serve in either chamber, after winning a special election in 1989.

In all, the 117 women of color who have served on Capitol Hill make up just over a quarter (26%) of the 448 women to ever hold congressional office, including voting and nonvoting members.These numbers reflect women seated on or before the first day of the 119th Congress.

Most of these 117 women (62%) first took office within the last dozen years. That includes a majority of the Hispanic (76%), Asian or Pacific Islander (67%) and Black (52%) women ever elected to Congress, as well as all four Native American or Alaska Native representatives. (Unlike the rest of our analysis, Asian and Pacific Islander members are combined here since the House’s historical database does not break them out separately.)

Here’s a closer look at these 117 congresswomen:

• Of the 64 Black women ever to serve in Congress, 60 have served in the House, either as voting members (57), or as nonvoting members from D.C. (1) or the U.S. Virgin Islands (2). Five Black women have served in the Senate: Besides Alsobrooks and Blunt Rochester, Democratic Sen. Carol Moseley Braun of Illinois was elected in 1992, and former Vice President Kamala Harris won a California senate seat in 2016. Sen. Laphonza Butler, another California Democrat, was appointed temporarily to Sen. Diane Feinstein’s former seat following her death in 2023. Only one Black women – Blunt Rochester – has been elected to both chambers of Congress.
• A total of 33 Hispanic women have served in Congress. All but one – Democratic Nevada Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto – have served in the House.
• Since Hawaii voters elected Mink in 1964, a total of 18 Asian or Pacific Islander women have served in Congress. Seventeen have served in the House, and three have served in the Senate. Mazie Hirono of Hawaii and Tammy Duckworth of Illinois have been elected to both chambers. (Harris and Strickland, the two multiracial lawmakers in this analysis, are both Black and Asian; they are counted in both categories here.)
• In addition to Davids, two other Native American women have served in the House, both representing New Mexico: Republican Yvette Herrell and Democrat Deb Haaland. Haaland was also secretary of the U.S. Department of the Interior under former President Joe Biden, making her the first Native American Cabinet secretary in the country’s history.  
• Former Alaska Rep. Mary Peltola, a Democrat, was the first Alaska Native to serve in Congress. She is, so far, the only one.

Most of the women of color ever elected to Congress (86%) have been Democrats. The sole Black Republican woman to serve on Capitol Hill was Rep. Mia Love of Utah, who held office during the 114th (2015-17) and 115th (2017-19) Congresses.

State-level trends

Overall, 30 states have ever been represented by at least one woman of color in Congress. Four U.S. territories and the District of Columbia have also sent women delegates of color to the House of Representatives.

This tally has increased slightly since the beginning of the 118th Congress in 2023. Virginia elected Rep. Jennifer McClellan, the state’s first Black congresswoman, in a February 2023 special election. And King-Hinds was elected as the Northern Mariana Islands’ first woman delegate of any background in November 2024.

Twenty-four states have ever elected at least one Black woman to Congress, 11 have elected at least one Hispanic woman, six have elected at least one Asian American woman, and two have elected a Native American woman. Alaska is the only state to have elected an Alaska Native woman to Congress.

American Samoa, D.C., Puerto Rico, the U.S. Virgin Islands and the Northern Mariana Islands have all sent either a Black, Hispanic or Pacific Islander woman to the House as either a nonvoting delegate or a resident commissioner.

The states that have sent the most women of color to Congress are California (24), Florida (10) and Texas (9).