Despite an historic run for the White House by a major party candidate this election, little has changed for women in politics.

Debbie Walsh of the Rutgers Center for American Women and Politics says "there is still much work that needs to be done when it comes to electing women."

Here in New Jersey, U.S. Rep. Bonnie Watson Coleman is the only female member of the state's congressional delegation of two U.S. senators and 12 congressmen.

The Central Jersey congresswoman was elected in 2014, the first woman member to go to Washington to represent New Jersey since Marge Roukema retired more than 10 years earlier in the 5th Congressional District in North Jersey.

"We have one woman in our congressional delegation and it is likely that after this election we will still have one woman in our congressional delegation."

Hillary Clinton is the first woman to lead a major party's presidential ticket, but "when we look a little further down-ballot at congressional races, we are barely seeing a breaking of the previous record of women running nationally," she said.

There are 167 women across the country whose names will be on the ballot. That is up from 166, an increase of one on the U.S. House side. In the U.S Senate, we have 16 women who are running for the Senate, down from a previous high of 18 women.

Nationally, there are just 84 women in the House and 20 in the Senate.

Walsh says the numbers have been improving in Trenton.

"New Jersey now ranks 11th in the nation, with over 30 percent of our state legislators now women." For many years, New Jersey was in the bottom 10.

But she says a lot of work needs to be done, particularly at the local level.

"We have not been seeing the kind of change that we would like to see. We need more women on councils, women as mayors. And all of that work is just so important to change the landscape in our state to make our state more equitable."

Joe Cutter is the afternoon news anchor at New Jersey 101.5

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