On January 4, 2007, the 110th United States Congress elected Nancy Pelosi as the first female Speaker of the House of Representatives in U.S. history. Pelosi, a Democrat from the 8th Congressional District in California (consisting primarily of San Francisco) with over 20 years of prior experience, became the highest-ranking woman in U.S. government history with her election as Speaker.

As the Speaker of the House, Pelosi sits second in line to the U.S. Presidency behind Vice-President Joe Biden. No woman has ever held as high an elective office as Nancy Pelosi. As the Speaker, Pelosi presides over House sessions, sets political agendas, appoints committee chairs, and partakes in many other government functions.

President Obama’s White House Chief of Staff, Rahm Emanuel, originally nominated Pelosi as Speaker when he was still an Illinois Representative. Other representatives followed Emanuel’s nomination for Pelosi, which eventually led to her becoming the 60th Speaker of the House.

On this day January 4, 2007, and upon tradition, the then leader of the Republic minority party, John Boehner, introduced Pelosi to the House as the new Speaker. Representative John Dingell, Democrat, administer the oath to Pelosi, and then she administered the oath to the other 232 Democrats and 202 Republicans who made up the 110th House of Representatives.

The election of Pelosi to Speaker of the House signifies the continual gradual increase of elected woman in government. In particular, the 110th Congress included more women than ever before with 16 female Senators and 71 females in the House of Representatives. In addition, 9 women served as Governors at the beginning of 2007. Woman have come a long way since the first elected Congresswomen, Jeanette Rankin of Montana, in 1917 (3 years before the 19th Amendment granted women the right to vote).

Still, many industrialized nations have many more women in government than the United States. As of September 2006, Sweden led industrialized democracies, with 165 elected women in the Riksdag (Sweden’s version of the U.S. Congress). The 165 women elected in Sweden’s Riksdag represent 47.3% percent of the country’s legislators.