New records are being set in 2018 in terms of women running for Congress. Although it is heavily skewed towards the Democrats, both parties are experiencing significant increases in women running. EMILY’s List, an organization that recruits based on the candidates pro-choice platform, reports that 30,000 women were interested in running for the upcoming election or future elections, a significant increase since 2016, when only 920 women reached out. Although not everyone has been able to officially file for office yet, so far, in total, there are 431 women nationwide running for the House. This includes 339 Democrats and 92 Republicans. In the last election, only 212 women in total ran. Similarly, there are 50 women that are running or likely running for the Senate, in comparison to only 25 in the 2016 election.
This article in particular looks towards the current male-dominated political atmosphere as the main cause for this surge in women candidates. President Trump in particular, is attributed as one of the largest driving factors because of many of his views towards a variety of issues including health care and immigration. Equally, the increase in female candidates is due to the domestic abuse scandals within the White House and the President’s sexual misconduct allegations by over a dozen women. It is both a blessing and a curse to have our current president as his continuous misconduct serves as fuel to the ever-growing fire. Although the surge in Republican women running also attributes the increase to similar reasons, according to this article, they feel that there is a blatant exclusion from the Democratic women. With the strong divide between parties still evident even between women fighting to establish gender equality, I hope that they will find a way to work together, if elected, at a time when collaboration seems impossible in our Congress.