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With Democrat Nancy Pelosi leading her party's resounding takeover of the US House of Representatives, women have finally broken through the "marble ceiling" holding them back in US politics, feminist groups said.
Pelosi, who led the Democratic effort to wrest control of the House from President George W. Bush's Republicans, is expected to be named the new Speaker of the House, the first time in US history a woman has held the powerful job.
Her rise in the wake of the Democrat sweep in Tuesday's national elections spearheads a surge in the role of women in elected office, with now some 70 seats in the 435-member body.
Women remain a distinct minority in the House, largely dominated by white men.
But their election participation has surged to new highs, with some 140 joining the races for House seats in Tuesday's election, 98 of them with the Democrats.
They also expanded their position in the Senate, adding two seats to hit 16 out of 100 Senators. The two additions were Claire McCaskill in Missouri and Amy Klobuchar in Minnesota. And former first lady Hillary Clinton got a boost to her believed strong ambitions to run for the presidency in 2008 with an easy reelection in the state of New York.
A woman, Sarah Palin, also took the governorship of the largest state, Alaska.
Anger over the war in Iraq played a great role in mobilizing women to run for elected office this election cycle, said Linda Fowler, a professor of political science at Dartmouth College.
Women are "less concerned by the macho rhetoric" regarding the war, like Bush's often-repeated phrase 'stay the course', Fowler said. Instead, they are "more pragmatic about what the costs of the war are," she told AFP.
A particular source of women's increased participation in politics came from small, traditionally conservative states and districts, she noted.
In such areas many people feel "a personal connection to the war" because of relatives who are serving in the US military, especially in the National Guard. Man of them come from jobs in the local police or fire fighters.
Fowler called it "progress" that women in politics in the United States, whether in the Democrat or Republican Party, no longer concentrate their interest on women's issues.
If as expected she is named to the House speaker job in January, demure, elegant but also iron-willed Pelosi, 66, will also be officially second in line, after Vice President Dick Cheney, for the presidency -- itself a job never held by a woman.
Daughter of Italian immigrants, mother of five and grandmother several times over, and married to a wealthy financier, Pelosi was first elected to Congress in 1987 from the ultra-liberal San Francisco Democratic stronghold in California.
The venerable US feminist group NOW, the National Organization for Women, cheered Pelosi's rise Wednesday as breaking through the "marble ceiling" that capped female politicians' rise in Congress.
The group, though, cheered even more strongly the expanded presence of female Democrats in Congress.
"Women voters cleaned House", said Kim Gandy of NOW.
"When the results are more complete, I am confident that we will be sending more progressive women to Washington DC than ever before," Gandy said in a statement.
"It is imperative that women's voices be heard at the highest levels of government, and the voters clearly agree."
"I hope a change in leadership will result in a real change in direction for the united States at this pivotal time," she added.
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AFP 091140 GMT 11 06
COPYRIGHT 2006 Agence France-Presse. All rights reserved.
