Center for American Women in Politics (CAWP) Women Elected Officials Database

The CAWP Women Elected Officials Database, developed by the Center for American Women and Politics (CAWP) at Rutgers University, represents the most complete collection of information anywhere in the world about women elected officials in the United States. The database includes full historical listings for women who have held office at the congressional, statewide elected executive, and state legislative levels nationwide. For each woman officeholder, the database includes geographic information, party identification, and race identification where available. This tool expands on the officeholder database that CAWP has long kept and shared with researchers. It contains entries for more than eleven thousand women officeholders dating back to 1893 when women first served in territorial legislatures.

Data is from several sources, including CAWP’s own historical records, state officeholder records, local news articles, data provided by KnowWho Data Services, and Elizabeth M. Cox’s Women State and Territorial Legislators, 1895-1995.