Welcome to Axis ProRata, where we usually take just 10 minutes to get you smarter on the collision of tech, business, and politics.

But today is a bit different.

We're going to spend about five minutes with Axios political reporter Elena Trin on the growing gender gap in American politics.

And no, I'm not really talking about voting splits here so much with women generally prefering

Democrats and Republicans generally preferring men. Instead, it's really how those splits are now

translating into a gender division within actual party leadership. Elena, thank you for joining us.

So I don't want to overstate this. Obviously, the vast majority of Congress people, even after this record midterm, are men.

But it does seem that at least on the Democratic side, we're seeing a change in the sorts of leadership roles women are filling, and namely that they're filling more of them.

Exactly. And I think it's a great sign of what had happened in 2018 because I think a big concern was that despite

a record number of women winning in their election races this year as well as we'll be serving

in Congress in 2019. It was unclear. A lot of these women were very young and they're going to be

new to Congress. And so it was unclear whether or how many people would be pushed into leadership roles.

But I think that the wave of women and everyone's saying 2018 was the year of the woman,

they're seeing an intense pressure, at least Congress, is to put women not only into Congress,

but to fill them into these leadership roles.

And I think it's a very encouraging sign for what we can expect of the year to come.

And with those leadership roles, I mean, they've been interesting, right? Because, I mean,

for example, you now have, I don't know if it for the first time ever, a woman who's now going

to lead the so-called Blue Dog Caucus, which is kind of the more conservative Democrats.

Exactly. It's the first time, well, a woman of color for the first time. And it's 23-year history. And that's another sign of what we saw in the 2018 midterm

elections. It wasn't just women, but minorities and minority women. And I think that that's

another big push to see not just women in general, but women of color to be put into these

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