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
The Broadsheet is Fortune’s newsletter for and about the world’s most powerful women. Subscribe here.
ALSO IN THE HEADLINES
- Call a plumber. A new report shows that union trade jobs have been more successful at filling and retaining women and people of color than non-union gigs. With a labor shortage in key industries that are up for federal infrastructure funding, unions are calling on leaders to invest in tradeswomen. The 19th
- Parental layoffs. Tech jobs offered more generous parental leave than other industries, and women were more likely to use the benefit to its fullest extent. But when mass layoffs swept through the tech industry, many employees were surprised to find that they were not legally protected against the layoffs because they were on leave. New York Times
- Succession IRL. Shari Redstone is the non-executive chair of Paramount Global, and as such is one of the most powerful women in Hollywood. To get there, she had to overcome her father's constant belittling, a "nuclear" coup from former CBS chairman and CEO Leslie Moonves, and the allegations against Moonves in the wake of #MeToo. New York Times
MOVERS AND SHAKERS: Sharon Levy will be CEO at Endemol Shine North America.
IN CASE YOU MISSED IT
- God is a nonbinary person. The Church of England is exploring using gender-neutral language for God instead of always using masculine pronouns. While inclusivity for nonbinary people feels like a contemporary issue, the Church has long recognized that God could not be male or female because its deity does not embody the human form. Washington Post
- In formation. For the first time in Super Bowl history, an all-women group of navy pilots will perform the flyover ahead of the game. They are celebrating 50 years of women flying in the U.S. Navy. ABC News
- Welcome to Hogwarts. Hogwarts Legacy, a new video game set in Harry Potter's historical world, broke records even before its release. The release hasn't been without controversy over J.K Rowling's anti-trans comments, but the creators of the game sought to go the extra mile to make the characters inclusive. CNN
ON MY RADAR
Elizabeth Chambers is not who she married ELLE
Greta Thunberg: ‘The world is getting more grim by the day’ New York Times
Originalism is going to get women killed The Atlantic
SZA’s ruination brought her everything New York Times
PARTING WORDS
“I try to make sure that my lab and the people I hire come from diverse backgrounds so that our thoughts and the way that we do our science shakes the table a little bit.”
—Dr. Kizzmekia Corbett, who led a key team in creating the vaccine against COVID-19
This is the web version of The Broadsheet, a daily newsletter for and about the world’s most powerful women. Sign up to get it delivered free to your inbox.
