I wouldnt call that vastly underrepresented figure a "huge number".
“There’s been a Republican woman problem for a while — it didn’t start this year,” said Kelly Dittmar, a political scientist at the Center for American Women and Politics. “But it is illuminated by the fact that when you drop by one, two, three or four, you’re getting down to such a small level of representation for women because you had no padding.”
Less attention has been paid to state legislatures, which are particularly important to increasing the number of women in office because they have been traditional steppingstones and training grounds. Currently, about 61 percent of
women in state legislatures are Democrats and about 38 percent are Republicans.
That gap increased in preliminary results from this year’s elections, to about 68 percent Democrats and 32 percent Republicans, according to Katie Fischer Ziegler of the National Conference of State Legislatures.
That discrepancy is striking because Republicans dominate the majority of statehouses. But that may have reduced opportunities for women to run, she said, because so many Republican incumbents are male and would have to be challenged in primaries.