House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, the highest-ranking elected woman in the United States, plunged Wednesday into the heated battle over gender gap politics, arguing that Republicans and their party's presumptive nominee, Mitt Romney, have alienated millions of women voters.

That helps Democrats' chances of taking back the House of Representatives, Pelosi said at a news conference in San Francisco.

"I would have said, two months ago, we had a fifty-fifty chance of winning the House," she said. "Since then, so much changed because women have shifted in large measure to the president and to the Democrats." Pelosi cited GOP budget proposals that she said would slash funding for Medicare, health care and contraceptives.

Those moves, Pelosi said, make her more optimistic that her party will regain control of the House in the November election.

Pelosi appeared particularly fired up about Romney's claims this week that President Obama's policies have resulted in women making up "92.3 percent" of all unemployed Americans. The claim was deemed to be "mostly false" by Politifact, the Pulitzer Prize-winning fact-check group.