United States of America

House Republicans have doubled the number of female candidates they have recruited to run for congressional seats this year as they seek to hold their majority and counter accusations of a gender gap with Democrats.

There are 103 Republican women, including incumbents, running for House seats this election — up from 48 in the previous election cycle, according to the Center for American Women and Politics at Rutgers University.

Just 35 women filed for one of the 125 Oklahoma legislative seats that were up for election in 2012.

This year, there will be nearly four times as many women running for the same number of seats. And following a trend across the nation, women will be better represented on the ballot than in at least a decade – and likely ever.

The historic wave of women running for Congress and governor this year already has landed 78 women on November ballots in several states. It also has revealed an uncomfortable truth: To seize political power in a landscape still dominated by men, many women are going to have to defeat another woman along the way.

Is this the year of the woman in Georgia politics?

Based on the results of the May 22 primary election, including the local races, it may be.

Politics has been a male-dominated industry in the state for centuries, with no female governors or even Georgia House or Senate majority leaders, but that could change this year.

A growing number of single women are running for public office. In order to beat their opponents, they may need to shatter some unfair stigmas first. Lily Espinoza Ploski is a Latina single mom to a 14-year-old son. She's also frustrated with a society that she says has told her time and again that her only value comes as a wife and mother; to many, it's this single status that's the real reason behind rising poverty rates and a general perception of "family decay" in America.

Georgia Democrats selected the first black woman to be a major party nominee for governor in the United States on Tuesday, choosing Stacey Abrams, a liberal former State House leader, who will test just how much the state’s traditionally conservative politics are shifting.