WASHINGTON -- They joked. They choked up. They banged shoes, they gave thanks, and delivered a warning: that despite gains for progressive female candidates in the 2008 election, there are still five men for every woman in the U.S. House of Representatives.

At a lively, lengthy luncheon yesterday hosted by feminist fundraising organization Emily's List and headlined by Secretary of State nominee Hillary Rodham Clinton, a parade of political superstars celebrated 2008 victories by Democratic women -- and female cabinet appointments by President-elect Barack Obama.

The mostly female audience of 2,000 stomped and cheered wildly when Mrs. Clinton, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, Labor secretary nominee Hilda Solis and Homeland Security secretary nominee Janet Napolitano appeared at the Washington Hilton event to deliver the same message, over and over again: Without Emily's List, they wouldn't be there.

Founded in 1985, Emily's List is one of the largest political action committees in the country, and during the 2007-08 election cycle, it raised more than $43 million to recruit and support liberal women candidates.

"Emily's List has been the original hammer that helped shatter so many glass ceilings," Mrs. Clinton told the crowd. "Those 18 million cracks are very personal to me," she added, in reference to the 18 million votes she received during the presidential campaign.

"Ellen," she continued, referring to Emily's List founder and president Ellen Malcolm, "has changed the face of American politics. She's also changed the wardrobe," Mrs. Clinton added dryly. " Every year there are more pantsuits of various kinds" in the House and Senate, she observed.

While proudly touting her group's role in the election of two Democratic women governors, two Democratic women senators and 12 new Democratic women in the House -- all of whom support abortion rights -- Ms. Malcolm challenged the group to work harder, noting that the U.S. House of Representatives remains predominantly male.

"Our work is far from over," she said. "We are nowhere near a representative democracy that rightfully includes the full participation of half the population."

But mostly, the mood was gleeful. North Carolina Sen. Kay Hagan prompted cheers when she reminded that seven years ago, her seat was held by conservative Republican Sen. Jesse Helms, who, she recalled, threw a group of congresswomen out of his hearing room -- including Ms. Pelosi -- after they tried to petition him to hold a hearing for the U.S. ratification of an international treaty of the United Nations to end discrimination against women.

U.S. Rep. Gwen Moore, D-Milwaukee, the first African-American woman to be elected to Congress from Wisconsin, referred to Ms. Pelosi as "the lady in satin and steel" who, in pushing a pay equity bill through the House, is not just "stomping out injustice but stomping it out in four-inch heels," she roared, taking off one of her own shoes and banging it on the podium as the room went wild.

Learning how to be a female political candidate required some work, some of the speakers recalled. U.S. Sen. Jeanne Shaheen reminisced about her own first run for governor of New Hampshire, when a media consultant told her to get rid of her pocketbook.

"'Governors don't carry pocketbooks,' they told me. Well, after I became governor, my state troopers carried my pocketbook!" she said triumphantly.

North Carolina Gov. Bev Perdue remembered being approached by a supporter who told her, "You don't look nearly as old and fat as you do on television."

That got a big laugh.

"Now you all be kind, that did not deserve that much laughter," she told the audience -- to more laughter. On a more serious note, Ms. Perdue recalled, her voice cracking slightly, the little girl who approached her after her election victory wearing a hand-lettered sign that said "Yes, I can be a female governor." It was an image she would carry with her always, she said.

"You're looking at the daughter of parents who did not graduate from high school, who taught me that girls are not different from boys and that with education and hard work, anything is possible."