Women in the United States Senate advancement such as sex discrimination, which still plays a factor in their limited numbers today. The first woman in the U.S. Senate was Rebecca Latimer Felton, who served representing Georgia for only one day in 1922. Hattie Caraway became the first woman to win election to the Senate (Arkansas), in 1932. Margaret Chase Smith was the first woman to serve in both the House and Senate; she first served in the House, and began serving in the Senate in 1949. Margaret Chase Smith won her 1960 race for Senate in the nation's first ever race pitting two women (her and
Women in the United States Senate the previous year, became the first woman of color in the Senate. She was also the first woman to defeat an incumbent senator, having toppled Senator Alan Dixon in the Democratic primary in 1992. Olympia Snowe arrived in the Senate in 1995, having previously served in the House of Representatives and both houses of the Maine state legislature. She and later Debbie Stabenow of Michigan are the only women to have served in both houses of a state legislature and both houses of the federal legislature. In 2000, Stabenow and Maria Cantwell became the first women to defeat incumbent "elected"