Over His Dead Body: A Positive Perspective On Widows in the U.S. Congress

Abstract

TE RHERE are some marked, if not macabre, connections between death and congressional careers for women. Most of the 95 women who have served in the U.S. Congress through 1976 have been widows: 73 percent of all women senators and 50 percent of all congresswomen were widows at the time they took office. For thirty-nine of these fifty widows, a seat in Congress has been doubly connected with death, i.e., an incumbent Member of Congress has died, thereby creating a vacancy for his widow (35) or for someone else's widow (4) to fill.1 All eleven women senators first came to Congress to fill a vacancy, ten of which were caused by death. The only two wives ever to have entered the U.S. Senate were appointed by their governor-husbands to fill a vacancy. The historical prevalence of widows in Congress deviates sharply from the statistical profile of women generally (only 18 percent of the female U.S. population aged thirty or more are widows) and also from the marital status of women now serving in state legislatures (10 percent widows).2 Although widowhood appears to be a strictly bipartisan phenomenon (equal proportions of Republican and Democratic congresswomen have been widows of a deceased incumbent), it is clearly not a sex-neutral requirement: no man has ever succeeded his deceased wife to Congress.3 While twelve states have never been represented by any women in Congress, for another eight states (Arkansas, Florida, Maine, Missouri, New Mexico, Pennsylvania, South Carolina and Tennessee) widowhood has been a virtual sine qua non for membership, i.e., no women except widows have ever been elected.