From Gloria Steinem’s predictions in 1972, to LaTosha Brown’s vision for democracy in 2026, six stories from the Ms. archives trace five decades of feminist political power and the unfinished fight for equal representation.

In 1972, when Ms. published its first full-length issue, Gloria Steinem saw something coming: Women voters, she predicted, were “just beginning to flex our muscles, and figure out what kind of political force we might be.”

At the time, women’s political power was routinely underestimated. Political strategists assumed women largely voted like their husbands, while women’s rights issues were too often treated as peripheral to national elections. Steinem challenged those assumptions, recognizing women demanded something more from the politicians seeking their votes.

A decade later, Eleanor Smeal (who later became the publisher of Ms.) would help identify and popularize the term “gender gap,” describing the measurable differences between how women and men vote. The phenomenon would reshape how political campaigns understood the electorate.

More than half a century later, as Americans cast their ballots in the 2026 midterm elections, the question is no longer whether women have political power—it’s whether the institutions they help elect will finally reflect it.

A record 590 women filed to run for the U.S. House during the 2026 election cycle. Women candidates are also poised to make history in gubernatorial races across the country: Deb Haaland could become the nation’s first Native American woman governor in New Mexico, while Keisha Lance Bottoms could become the first Black woman governor in U.S. history if elected in Georgia.

Yet women still hold only about 28 percent of seats in Congress. And the stakes of this election—from reproductive freedom and immigration enforcement, to voting rights and the future of constitutional equality—extend far beyond the number of women elected.

For more than five decades, Ms. has documented the growing power of women voters, candidates and elected officials. We’ve tracked the gender gap, challenged the barriers facing women in politics and explored what it would mean to build a democracy that represents all of us.

These six selections from the Ms. Magazine Archive trace that history—from the earliest predictions of women’s political power, to today’s calls to fundamentally remake American democracy. (Full access to these selections and the entirety of 50+ years of issues of Ms. is available via the Ms. Magazine Archive on ProQuest, from Clarivate. Questions or comments? Get in touch with Karon Jolna, executive director of Ms. Classroom, at kjolna@msmagazine.com.)

1. [1972] When Gloria Steinem Predicted the Power of Women Voters

Women Voters Can’t Be Trusted: The Birth of the Gender Gap

Gloria Steinem | July 1972

“We’ve been voting differently for quite a long time,” Steinem observed in the first full-length issue of Ms. “Now, women want something in return.”

Published nearly a decade before the gender gap became a widely recognized political phenomenon, Steinem’s essay challenged some of the most deeply entrenched assumptions about women voters.

She examined how women’s political beliefs and priorities differed from men’s, how their voting behavior defied established political wisdom, and why the emerging women’s liberation movement had the potential to transform elections.

The provocative title turned a familiar political assumption on its head: Women couldn’t necessarily be trusted to vote the way male political leaders expected them to.

More than five decades later, Steinem’s central insight remains relevant. Women aren’t merely participants in the political process. They have the power to change its priorities.

[1981] The Impossible Standards for Women Candidates

Too Young, Too Old, Too Fat, Too Thin, Too Shrill, Too Genteel: The Trouble With Women Candidates

Ruth Mandel | May 1981

Long before today’s endless scrutiny of women candidates’ voices, clothes, ages and appearances, political scientist Ruth Mandel was documenting the double standards confronting women who sought public office.

“Many a political woman has discovered a gulf,” she wrote, “between the self with whom she was familiar and other people’s paperdoll image of a woman suited for candidacy.”

Mandel, then director of the Center for the American Woman and Politics at Rutgers University’s Eagleton Institute of Politics, explored the unrealistic expectations placed on women candidates—and the ways those expectations could limit their political ambitions.

More than four decades later, the particulars may have changed, but the underlying problem remains familiar. Women running for office continue to face questions about their qualifications, likability, appearance and temperament that their male counterparts often escape.

Every woman who runs—and every woman who wins—helps challenge those expectations. But as Mandel’s analysis makes clear, the barriers are structural, not simply personal.

[1995] What Happens When More Women Win?

Women on the Hill: Can They Make a Difference?

Teresa Riordan and Sue Kirchhoff | January 1995

The 1992 elections became known as the “Year of the Woman,” sending a historic wave of women to Congress and dramatically increasing their representation in the Senate and House.

But did electing more women actually change the way Washington worked?

Three years later, Teresa Riordan and Sue Kirchhoff set out to answer that question.

Their reporting found that the influx of women lawmakers had changed the tenor of congressional debate, elevated issues previously relegated to the sidelines and influenced legislative priorities. Their accounting identified 66 feminist bills passed by the 103rd Congress, a substantial increase over previous congressional sessions.

The lesson went beyond the importance of representation for its own sake. Women in office could help change which problems Congress considered urgent—and whose lives and experiences informed its decisions.

Still, the authors recognized that a single historic election was not enough. Real progress would require electing women in greater numbers until their presence in government became ordinary, rather than exceptional.

That unfinished goal remains at the center of the 2026 elections.

[2004] The Gender Gap Becomes a Political Force

It’s the Women, Stupid: Will It Take 22 Million Women to Save the World?

Ellen Hawkes | Fall 2004

By the 2004 presidential election, the gender gap was no longer a prediction. It was a political reality that candidates, campaigns and commentators were struggling to understand.

Ellen Hawkes examined the growing attention paid to women voters, the issues driving their political decisions and the feminist organizations working to translate women’s political engagement into electoral influence.

Her argument was emphatic: Women voters could not afford to underestimate their collective power.

“The gender gap—which can decide elections—is about women, period,” she wrote. “We simply vote differently than men.”

Of course, women are not a monolith. Race, class, age, geography and political affiliation all shape how women vote, and the differences among women can be as politically consequential as those between women and men.

But Hawkes captured an important shift in American politics: Women voters were increasingly recognized as a constituency whose preferences could help determine election outcomes—and whose demands political leaders could no longer simply ignore.

[2013] Beyond the Gender Gap

The Feminist Factor

Eleanor Smeal | Winter 2013

For decades, political analysts had studied how women voted differently from men. But following the 2012 presidential election, Ms. asked another question: What happens when we look not just at gender, but at feminist values?

An in-depth poll commissioned by Ms., the Communications Consortium Media Center and the Feminist Majority Foundation, and conducted by Lake Research Partners, found that 55 percent of women voters and 30 percent of men identified as feminists.

The findings suggested that feminist identification was itself a powerful political force, cutting across demographic lines and helping explain voting behavior.

Eleanor Smeal, who had helped identify the gender gap decades earlier, argued that it was time to recognize what Ms. called the “feminist factor.”

“It’s time to acknowledge that it wasn’t just women who made a critical difference in reelecting President Barack Obama,” she wrote, “but feminists.”

The distinction mattered. Feminist political power wasn’t limited to women, nor could it be understood solely through gender. It also encompassed voters of different identities who supported gender equality and shared feminist priorities.

The feminist factor offered a more expansive way to understand who was shaping elections—and why.

[2026] Women Are the Majority. Why Doesn’t Our Democracy Reflect That?

Women Are the Majority. Now Let’s Build a Democracy That Knows It.

LaTosha Brown | Summer 2026

More than five decades after Steinem predicted the rise of women’s electoral power, voting rights organizer LaTosha Brown is asking an even more fundamental question: What if the problem isn’t simply who gets elected, but how American democracy itself is designed?

“Women are the majority of this nation,” Brown writes in an essay for Ms. marking America’s 250th anniversary. “We are more than half the voters, more than half the population, and we are grotesquely underrepresented in both chambers of power in Congress.”

“That is not an accident. That is architecture.”

Brown, cofounder of the Black Voters Matter Fund and founder of the Southern Black Girls & Women’s Consortium, argues that women and other historically marginalized communities must move beyond seeking representation within existing political institutions—and begin reimagining those institutions themselves.

Her proposal: a Cabinet-level Department of Democracy dedicated to protecting voting rights, strengthening civic participation and holding government accountable.

The broader challenge is to stop thinking about democracy as a system women must simply learn to navigate, and start thinking about it as one they have the power to redesign.

It’s a fitting culmination of more than 50 years of feminist political analysis: from demanding that politicians take women voters seriously to demanding a democracy that truly represents them.

The women who wrote these articles were responding to very different political moments. But together, their work tells a remarkably consistent story.

Women’s political power has never been inevitable. It has been organized, asserted, challenged, underestimated and won—again and again.

The gender gap changed how elections were understood. The rise of women candidates changed who could hold political office. The feminist factor expanded our understanding of the electorate. And the movement for a more representative democracy continues to challenge the structures that keep women from exercising power on equal terms.

As Americans vote in the 2026 midterms, the question Steinem raised more than half a century ago still resonates: What kind of political force might women become?

The next question may be even more important: What kind of democracy can we build when we fully exercise that power?

Explore more than 50 years of feminist history through the Ms. Magazine Archive on ProQuest, from Clarivate. The digital collection includes the magazine’s reporting, essays, interviews and cultural commentary from 1972 to the present. Access to historical articles may require a participating institution or subscription.

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A note from Ms. editors: We want to hear from you for The Majority, a new campaign collecting stories about how reproductive freedom has enabled readers to build the lives they want and need.

Poll after poll shows a majority of Americans support reproductive healthcare access. Yet public debate overlooks the lives shaped by abortion access, contraception, IVF, miscarriage care, maternal healthcare or comprehensive sex education—countless women who chose to pursue an education, have children, not have children, protect their health and chart their own future. What’s your reproductive freedom story? Add your voice. Together, these stories will help show not only why reproductive freedom remains a majority value, but also what it makes possible.