The great map and history lesson about the women’s suffrage movement over at GovBeat, which looks at states that led the way in giving women the vote, got us to thinking about how those states stack up now in terms of electing women to high office.  Well, it turns out that the 10 states that granted women the ballot before the movement gained steam on March 3, 1914, when representatives of the Congressional Union for Woman Suffrage testifying in a hearing before the House Judiciary Committee, have among the best records for electing women to higher office.  First, the throwback map that highlights the 10 states:  Now, a few facts about these states, courtesy of the Center for American Woman and Politics, which has a great fact sheet about women in office:  And, since we all love maps, here’s another one that looks at how these states stack up in terms of the representation of women in state legislatures:  Center for American Women and Politics  So what does this loose collection of historical facts suggest? For one, the West, with its frontier spirit, has led the way in terms of women in office. Think Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer (R) and New Mexico Gov. Susana Martinez (R). But, more than a century after women gained the ballot, there are still just 5 women governors and 20 women U.S. Senators, a record, yet not on par with the population of women in the United States.  Also notable, often women’s suffrage meant white women’s suffrage, particularly in the South, although the national suffrage groups were often exclusionary as well. Here’s a headline from the March 2, 1913 edition of the Times-Dispatch in Richmond, Va.:  Read the full article, which says that white suffragists feared that “Southern women affiliated with the parade and the populace of Washington would object to the presence of negro women in the big demonstration,” here.  One historical link of note is this:  That same year, 1913, black women started a movement and club of their own, the Alpha Suffrage Club of Chicago, believed to be the first of its kind.  Three decades later, Carol Moseley Braun was born in that same city and in 1992 she became the first — and only — black woman elected to the U.S. Senate.
It's no surprise that states that led the way in granting women the right to vote also were the first to elect them to higher offices.