As of spring 2002, women hold 13 of the 100 seats in the U.S. Senate and 60 of the 435 in the U.S. House. They make up just 22.4 percent of state legislatures and are just 5 of 50 governors across the country. Currently, the Inter-Parliamentary Union ranks the United States 52nd out of 179 countries in the world for its percentage of women in the national legislature (Congress). These numbers place the United States near the bottom of Western industrialized democracies