Party Crashers

It used to be that women couldn't land top political positions in Massachusetts. This year, that changed.

From left: Therese Murray, Niki Tsongas, and Lisa Wong are invading the boys’ club. (Photo by Tanit Sakakini, at the Algonquin Club in Boston)

Massachusetts may be the bluest of blue states, but its government remains mostly a boys' club. The only woman currently holding statewide office is Martha Coakley, Massachusetts' first female attorney general. Moreover, 41 percent of the state's municipalities had no women at all on their select boards or city councils in 2005, according to a study by the Center for Women in Politics & Public Policy at UMass-Boston.

But this year, three women cracked the political glass ceiling at the local, state, and federal levels.

In March, state Senator Therese Murray was unanimously elected Senate president, becoming the first woman to lead one of the state's legislative branches. Previously the upper chamber's top budget writer, she came in with a reputation for being tough and knowledgeable - and more than ready to hold her own with the men who run the rest of the State House. "I've frequently been the only woman at the table in the jobs I've had," she says. "This is nothing new."

Then in October, Niki Tsongas won a special election for the Fifth Congressional District seat, becoming the first woman the state has sent to Washington in a quarter century. As a Democrat and the widow of Paul Tsongas, she was favored to win in the solidly Democratic district that first sent her husband to Congress in 1974. But she encountered an unexpectedly vigorous Republican opponent who tapped into the district's moderate-independent streak. "I had to earn every vote," Tsongas says.

A few weeks later, Lisa Wong, a 28-year-old economic development consultant, came up with a landslide mayoral victory in Fitchburg, beating a veteran city councilor who questioned her ability to revive the city's economy. The daughter of Chinese immigrants, Wong will be the first minority mayor in Fitchburg's history. "I keep saying, 'It's about time,'" she says. "It sends a signal that politics is for everyone and anyone."

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