Report: Number of Female Chiefs of Staff Steady
The number of female chiefs of staff in the House and Senate has remained fairly stagnant for three years, according to statistics released Thursday by the Women’s Campaign Forum.
The group announced the numbers in a press release for its annual “Hail to the Chiefs— ceremony, which recognizes the work of female chiefs of staff. The information was culled from hillwho.com, a Web site for staffers that posts Congressional statistics.
Since 2007, the number of House chiefs of staff who are women has increased by two, from 142 to 144. In the Senate, that number has decreased, from 26 in 2007 to 22 in 2009.
According to the Women’s Campaign Forum, a nonpartisan group that works to put women who support abortion rights into political roles, the numbers indicate that female chiefs of staff have hit a “glass ceiling.—
It’s a more pessimistic view than the group took in 2007, when officials touted the rise in women in top Congressional roles.
On Thursday, WCF pointed out that the number of female House Members has stayed below 100 since 2007. But about 46 percent of them now employ a female chief of staff, up from 35 percent in 2007.
For men, that figure is much lower: About one-third of male Representatives and 20 percent of male Senators have a female chief of staff, according to the WCF.