Former US ambassador to Austria, Swanee Hunt, is founder of the Women and Public Policy Program at Harvard Kennedy School of Government, founder of Political Parity, an organization dedicated to increasing the number of women in politics, and author of "Rwandan Women Rising." Andrea Dew Steele is founder and president of Emerge America, an organization that recruits, trains and provides a network for Democratic women running for office. The views expressed in this commentary are their own.

(CNN) On January 3, Tina Smith will be sworn in to replace Al Franken as the junior US senator from Minnesota. The resignation of a male senator confessing to sexual misconduct, and his almost immediate replacement by a woman, is symbolic of an extraordinary period in American history. It also likely foreshadows a massive shift: the titanic infusion of women into leadership at all levels of government.

Right now, women make up less than 20% of Congress. In fact, according to the Inter-Parliamentary Union, which tracks gender representation in government, the United States ranks number 101 globally in terms of women's political representation, behind Guinea, Pakistan and -- get this -- Saudi Arabia.

Swanee Hunt

Andrea Dew Steele

Current numbers from Rutgers University's Center for American Women and Politics show that women's representation at lower levels is equally dismal: only 24% of statewide elected officials, 25% of state legislators and 22% of major-city mayors are women. And the statistics are even more abysmal for women of color, about 18% of the US population, who make up only 7.1% of Congress, 2.2% of statewide elected executives, 6% of state legislators and 9% of major-city mayors.

In DC-speak, our government is pale, male and stale. There simply aren't enough women in power to join their male allies who are holding perpetrators accountable. We cheer when we see a room with more than a modicum of female officials trying to make sure women's experiences inform policy-making. Less cheery are the many long tables with dozens of chairs that ought to be filled by women leaning forward over stale coffee, pen in hand.

Of course, we're not talking about one particular woman or one particular man. But as a group, men and women take strikingly different approaches to crafting legislative agendas. A mound of research -- including a 2016 study by political scientists Craig Volden, Alan E. Wiseman and Dana E. Wittmer -- shows that female legislators are more likely to introduce bills of importance to families. They are much stronger advocates for women's health concerns, such as affordable contraception, breast cancer research and domestic violence laws.