An awful lot was said about the number of women in the incoming U.S. Congress — how it’s historic, record-setting, and so on. How it’s changing Washington. But from where I sit, it’s still a fairly meager number.

Screenshot from BBC news story, showing the gender makeup of U.S. Congress in 2019.

As the BBC reported recently, a record 529 women candidates were registered for Congress in 2018 (three-quarters of them running as Democrats), and 116 of them won (almost all of them Democrats). Added to the existing 10 women Senators who weren’t up for reelection, this means the incoming Congress that begins today includes 126 women — of 535 total seats. That’s less than 25%.

Sure, we’re a long way from Jeannette Rankin, who was the sole woman in Congress in 1917-18, and again in 1941-42, or from Hattie Caraway, who was alone at times as the only woman in the U.S. Senate in the 1930s. And we’ve come a long way since the first 130 years of Congress saw zero women in either house (and we’ve seen an all-male Senate as late as 1978). But 18 states have never been represented by a female Senator, and another 14 have only ever had one. (No state has had more than three women serve as Senator.) Four states still have never had a woman Representative.

Take a look at the BBC’s chart (below), which shows the number of Democratic and Republican women in Congress since the late 1980s.

This chart from the BBC shows that we’ve quadrupled the number of women in Congress within 30 years, but women still comprise less than one-quarter of Congress.

And we know it’s not for lack of trying. As we saw in the most recent election, four-of-five women candidates lost out. (To be fair, a handful of them ran against each other, and another handful were plain-old looney tunes who were fortunate to get any votes.) And we know it’s usually not for lack of qualification, experience, or sound policy proposals. By now, we’ve all seen the studies showing that identical resumés will get far better responses if you switch the name at top to a man’s name, and that “John” will be offered far better pay than “Jennifer”, everything else being equal.

The two screenshots above show where in the U.S. women candidates ran for the House of Representatives in the 2018 midterms (left), and where they won (right). Both maps are colored to indicate party affiliation.

In certain circles, I regularly see some form of the complaint: “Why does she have to be ‘the first woman Senator from Oklahoma?’ — can’t she just be a Senator?” (I chose Oklahoma as a joke; there’s never been a woman Senator from Oklahoma.) Why, indeed? Why do we never hear about the “first man Senator” from a particular state, or the “first male mayor in Utah”? Doesn’t seem fair, does it?

I would love to see the day when we can’t actually use that phrase anymore because women have held every position available. But then we still might see the day when there’s a “first-ever all-woman Supreme Court” or “first all-woman Senate”. Just to even things up a little. Remember, there’s been an all-male Senate in my lifetime.

I jumped around a little, so in case my point wasn’t clear, here it is. I don’t get too excited about “nearly 25%” of Congress being women. Yes, it’s the most-ever. Yes, it’s continued progress. But instead of excitement, I feel embarrassment. Fewer than 100 women have ever served in the U.S. Senate — and the U.S. Senate has 100 members at any given time, each of whom requires election every six years.

We have a long ways to go.