Women in the United States Senate After retiring from the Senate, she married former Senator Howard Baker (R-TN). Kassebaum has the distinction of being the first female elected senator who did not succeed her husband in Congress (Margaret Chase Smith was only elected to the Senate after succeeding her husband to his House seat). At the time of her retirement in 1997, Kassebaum was the second longest serving female senator, after Smith (Since 1997 five women have had Senate careers longer than Kassebaum's). The first woman in the Senate was Rebecca Latimer Felton, who served representing Georgia for only one day in 1922. Hattie Caraway became
History of women in the United States 1992 was known as the "Year of the Woman" because more women than ever before were elected to political office that year (women gained 19 House and 3 Senate seats for a total of 47 seats in the House and seven seats in the Senate) including Carol Moseley Braun, the first black female senator. In 1993, Ruth Bader Ginsburg was confirmed by Congress as a Supreme Court Justice, becoming the second woman on the court. In 1994, Shannon Faulkner applied to The Citadel, The Military College of South Carolina and was accepted for admission. She had left her gender information