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It took us 200 years to elect the first Democratic woman to the Senate in her own right, and that's Barbara Mikulski. Six years later, we had a grand slam: We elected four new Democratic women to the Senate. Sen. Mikulski now has some company.

In 220 years of American presidential politics, there had been no serious female major party contenders, though women had been campaigning for the presidency since before they could vote, starting with Victoria Woodhull in 1872 and Belva Lockwood in 1884.

When I became the first woman to represent the state of Texas in the United State Senate, it was with the help of a lot of women - and a large number of men, too.

Twenty-six years ago, I became the first Democratic woman elected to the Senate in her own right. I was the first, but I made sure I wasn't the only.

I am really proud to be a part in whatever way of women becoming active in the political scene. I think it was the first time that people came to terms with the reality of what it meant to have a Senate made up of 98 men and two women.

The reality is is that Congress is a very male-gendered oriented institution. Out of the, you know, more than 10,000 people who've ever been elected to Congress, you know, only about 250 of them have ever been women.

So many other countries have had female leaders, in fact the U.S. ranks 61st in female representation in government and I think it is startling and sign of a change that needs to be made.

Between 1972 and 1987, the number of Democratic women in the House had actually gone down, from 14 to 12. EMILY's list started doing House races in 1988.

We are bringing women into politics to change the nature of politics, to change the vision, to change the institutions. Women are not wedded to the policies of the past. We didn't craft them. They didn't let us.