WASHINGTON — In a Washington that has grown demonstrably more testosterone-fueled since President Donald Trump’s inauguration, it took two Republican women to secure the end of a long effort to repeal and replace ObamaCare.

They were the same two women — Maine Sen. Susan Collins and Alaska Sen. Lisa Murkowski — who had been excluded from the 13-member working group drafting the Republican bills.

“Nobody’s being excluded based upon gender. Everybody’s at the table,” Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell had said of his all-white-males group.

In the early hours of Friday morning, the duo were overshadowed by the more dramatic and unexpected no vote from Sen. John McCain of Arizona.

There was reason for the attention lavished on McCain — a war hero and veteran senator returns to the Capitol days after a dire cancer diagnosis. But without Collins’ and Murkowski’s steadfast opposition, his vote would have been meaningless.

Also largely overlooked: Hawaii Sen. Mazie Hirono, a Democrat who like McCain made an arduous trip to Washington despite her recent diagnosis of late-stage kidney cancer.

Social media buzzed Friday with praise for the women senators from many fronts, including from men. But from many women, there was also a sense of familiarity at being ignored or taken for granted.

To a tweet pointing out the GOP senators’ exclusion at the beginning of the Senate’s health care effort and the attention focused elsewhere during the vote, Shawnda Westly, a Democratic strategist from California, joked: “I’m so surprised! Said no women ever reading this tweet.”

“It’s been true throughout history that great men make a difference only due to great women,” added former California congresswoman Ellen Tauscher.

If there was an edge to a desire for recognition, it may have come from the times. A quarter century removed from the “Year of the Woman” — the 1992 election that dramatically increased the numbers of female representatives — politics remains difficult to navigate for women.

They are supposed to be strong but not overbearing; professional, but nurturing. Criticisms they offer tend to be judged more harshly than those coming from men, research shows, so the act of seeking and keeping political office is fraught. Their voices are suspect, and their clothing and hairstyles still analyzed.

The numbers of women in high elective office have stalled in recent years; only 21 members of the Senate are female, five of them Republicans.

Women comprise less than a quarter of elected officials in state legislatures, statewide elective office and in the House and Senate, according to figures compiled by the Center for American Women and Politics at Rutgers University.

In both parties, women have to fight being invisible.

During President Barack Obama’s first term, women on his staff invented a system called “amplification.” If an idea was offered by a woman in a meeting to no notice, another woman would repeat it with credit given to the originator.

The Trump administration includes some senior women, including the president’s daughter Ivanka, counselor Kellyanne Conway and press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders. But the administration’s visage has been mostly male, and its attitudes combative.