First Woman Representative

When Mae Ella Nolan took her seat in 1923, she became the first woman to succeed her late husband in the U.S. House of Representatives, winning the California special election held after Representative John I. Nolan died in office. Filling a vacancy left by a deceased spouse was at the time the most common route by which women entered Congress. A short time later, in the mid-1920s, Mary T. Norton of New Jersey was elected to the House without having succeeded a husband, becoming the first woman to win a congressional seat in her own right and the first Democratic woman to serve in the body.

These early elections marked the gradual entry of women into national legislative office in the years after the Nineteenth Amendment guaranteed women the vote in 1920. Norton's victory was especially significant because it demonstrated that women could be elected on the strength of their own campaigns and records rather than as caretakers of a husband's seat. Together these milestones helped establish a lasting presence for women in Congress and opened the way for later generations of female lawmakers.