WASHINGTON Women emerged as winners in election contests across the US this week, with a string of primary election victories exuberantly hailed in the US media as a historic breakthrough.

But looking down from the public gallery on the marble columns and dark-stained desks of the US Senate, the striking impression is of the overwhelming dominance of elderly white males. Of the 100 Senate seats, 83 are occupied by men. In the House of Representatives, the ratio is roughly the same, with only 73 women in the 435-member chamber.

In world rankings of democracies in terms of gender balance, the Interparliamentary Union puts the US 69th, between Turkmenistan and San Marino.

That imbalance helps explain media excitement on Tuesday (June 8) when women were triumphant in state after state. Meg Whitman, the former chief executive of eBay, will be the first woman to represent the Republicans in a contest to be California governor after winning the party primary. Another successful businesswoman, Carly Fiorina, a former Hewlett-Packard chief executive, will be the first woman to represent the Republicans in a US Senate race in California.

The successes were mirrored in Maine, Nevada, Arkansas, Iowa and South Carolina. The Washington Times, in a front-page headline, joined almost every US television channel in dubbing 2010 “The Year of the Woman”. The conservative Daily Caller website had the headline “Ladies Night” while its rival, Slate, had “Women on Top”.

But it remains to be seen if this will be a breakthrough year. Groups that promote women in politics expressed caution, noting that most of those who won primaries this week were not favourites for the elections on November 2 for Congress and the governorships.

Debbie Walsh, director of the Centre for American Women and Politics, thought the headlines overplayed, but added “We are seeing more women running than two or four years ago and there clearly seems to be an uptick. There were serious wins in places where women have not won before. These are important.” She reiterated the scale of the problems facing women, not only in Congress but for the governorships. Of the 50 governorships, only six are occupied by women, and three of those are retiring. “We need three wins just to get back to where we are,” she said.

The real story of the night may turn out to be not that so many women won but that so many Republican women won. The Democratic party, with feminists long prominent, has many more women in Congress than the Grand Ole Party. Until Tuesday, Republican women struggled to get beyond the primaries.

The Republican party establishment is under pressure from Tea Party activists, many of whose leaders are women and disdainful of the “good ol' boy network”. Sarah Palin, the main figurehead of the Tea Party and leading the party rebellion, endorsed many of the women who won on Tuesday. Her backing translated into sudden jumps in poll standings, in donations and influxes of volunteers. Of the 11 endorsements Palin has made so far this year, eight have won and only three lost.

Congratulating this week's winners, she said “It will be exciting to have these excellent candidates - especially those fearless GOP 'mama grizzlies' - take their message straight through to November and into office.” Palin is pushing a mixture proving potent in the primaries support for women candidates, anti-abortion, Christianity, small government and anti-Obama.

One of the claimants to founding the Tea Party movement is Smart Girl Politics, a website promoting women in the Republican party and a conservative alternative to the pro-Democrat Emily's List. Spokeswoman Rebecca Wales said “We look at Congress and overwhelmingly they are old males. What we are doing is showing this is not what the country wants. We are looking for fresh blood.” She said there were 14 women Republicans running for the Senate this year compared with three two years ago, and 94 for a place in the House compared with 46 in 2008.

The most important result of the night may turn out to have been Nikki Haley in South Carolina. Haley, whose parents are Sikhs from India, fell just short of the 50 per cent needed to win the primary outright but is strong favourite to win the run-off to represent the Republicans for the governorship, a contest the party will almost certainly win.

It was a staggering result for Haley, one of Palin's endorsements, in a state that is one of the most reactionary in the US. It is ranked bottom in terms of gender balance. The 46 members of the state senate are all male. And she won in spite of a nasty smear campaign, with two men claiming unconvincingly to have slept with this wife and mother.

Jennifer Lawless, director of the Women and Politics Institute at the American University in Washington, said the importance of the primary results was that having Haley, Whitman and Fiorina on television would inspire young women to think about going into politics. But she is sceptical about “The Year of The Woman” claims. “I do not think it will materialise. We do not have the number of women running in open seats for this to be a sea change.”

Both Lawless and Walsh noted that the US applied different standards overseas, inserting into new constitutions such as Iraq's quotas that reserve 25 per cent of seats for women. “It is ironic,” said Walsh.—Dawn/The Guardian News Service