Excerpt from the New York Times:
Fed up with the government shutdown in 2013, Senator Susan Collins took the floor, presented a three-point plan and implored colleagues on both sides of the aisle to work with her.
As soon as she walked off, her phone rang. The first senators to call her, she said, were women: Kelly Ayotte and Lisa Murkowski, fellow Republicans, and Amy Klobuchar, a Democrat.
“I’ve always thought that was significant,” said Ms. Collins, a Republican from Maine. “And indeed, we put together a plan for the reopening of government, and women led the way.”
Tuesday failed to be a ceiling-shattering day for women in government. In addition to Hillary Clinton’s loss, the number of female governors dropped to five from six, according to the Center for American Women and Politics at Rutgers. Kate Brown of Oregon was the only woman to win a governor’s race. The number of women in Congress stayed flat at 104, or 19 percent of seats. (The Senate had a net gain of one woman and the House a net loss of one.) Thirteen states will send no women to the 115th Congress, including Mississippi and Vermont, which have never had a woman in Congress.