A deal is coming together in the Senate to end the shutdown, raise the debt ceiling, and then begin work on major tax and spending reform. Who put it together?

In a Senate still dominated by men, women on both sides of the partisan divide proved to be the driving forces that shaped a negotiated settlement. The three Republican women put aside threats from the right to advance the interests of their shutdown-weary states and asserted their own political independence.

“I probably will have retribution in my state,” [Senator Lisa Murkowski of Alaska] said. “That’s fine. That doesn’t bother me at all. If there is backlash, hey, that’s what goes on in D.C., but in the meantime there is a government that is shut down. There are people who are really hurting.”

Two powerful women on the Democratic side of the aisle — Senators Barbara A. Mikulski of Maryland and Patty Murray of Washington — took a hard line and pressed their Republican counterparts to temper their demands, but they also offered crucial points of compromise.

Together, the five senators starkly showed off the increasing power of women — even those who are not on the relevant committees — as their numbers grow in the upper chamber. Of the 13 senators on a bipartisan committee who worked on the deal framework, about half were women, even though women make up only 20 percent of the Senate.

Further helping matters: Murkowski was successfully primaried by a Tea Party challenger in 2010, but went on to win as a write-in candidate with basically no help from scared Republican leaders.

Which means she was mad at all the right people well before any of this shutdown stuff started. "Politics be damned," she told the New York Times.