There are very few female members of the U.S. state legislature

Democrat Kayla Young and Republican Patricia Rucker often clash over abortion rights and every other issue in the West Virginia Legislature, but they agree on one thing Consistent: Too few women among their colleagues are hurting the state.

“There are exceptions to every rule, but I think in general, men do see this as their domain,” Rucker said. Rooker was part of the Republican Senate supermajority that passed one of the nation’s strictest abortion bans, while Yang was the lone Democrat. Women elected to the House of Representatives – Objection.

Nearly 130 years since the first three women were elected to U.S. state legislatures, women remain severely underrepresented in state legislatures.

In 10 states, women make up less than 25 percent of state legislatures, according to the Center for American Women in Politics at Rutgers University. West Virginia is at the bottom of the list, with just 16 women among its 134 members, or just under 12 percent. In comparison, women hold just over 60% of state legislative seats in Nevada. Similarly low numbers have been found in nearby southern states such as Mississippi, South Carolina, Tennessee and Louisiana.

“It’s absolutely crazy to know that over 50 percent of West Virginia’s population is women, and sometimes I’m the only woman on the committee, period,” said Young, who is currently the only woman on the House Artificial Intelligence Committee when the House Judiciary Committee He was one of only two members of the House Judiciary Committee when the committee approved the state’s near-total abortion ban.

Although women have registered and voted at higher rates than men in every presidential election since 1980 and across nearly every demographic, including race, education level and socioeconomic status, women occupy legislative seats across the United States Numbers remain low.

Over the past three decades, voters have shown a willingness to vote for women. But Jennifer Lawless, chair of the University of Virginia’s politics department, said they don’t have the chance to do that because women aren’t running.

“The gender gap in political ambition is as wide now as it’s ever been,” Lawless said, adding that women are much less likely to be recruited to run for office or feel qualified to run in environments they perceive to be hostile. . Political Environment.

Data shows that candidates running in conservative southern states — still predominantly Democratic women — are not winning as those states continue to elect Republicans overwhelmingly.

In 2022, 39 women are running for state legislative seats in West Virginia as candidates for their party’s nomination, 26 of them Democrats. Only two Democratic candidates won, compared with 11 of 13 Republican candidates.

Debbie Walsh, director of the Center for Women in American Politics at Rutgers University, said there is more money, infrastructure and support to recruit and campaign for Democratic female candidates. She said Republicans often shy away from talking about what is labeled or dismissed as “identity politics.”

“It’s a belief in meritocracy, ‘The best candidate will rise. If it’s a woman, great.'” They don’t say, ‘We don’t want women, but if it’s a man, too. That’s okay,'” she said. “Diversity itself has no value. “

Larissa Martinez, founder and president of the Women’s Public Leadership Network, one of only a handful of right-leaning organizations in the country that exclusively supports female candidates. She says identity politics within the Republican Party is a major obstacle to her work. Part of her organization’s slogan is: “We’re for women, not against men.”

In 2020, small-town public school teacher Amy Grady sparked a huge political upheaval when she defeated then-Senate President Mitch Carmichael in the West Virginia Republican primary. The move comes after school employees have been on strike for years, with school employees crowding into the state Capitol.

Carmichael has received more than $127,000 in donations, while Grady has raised just over $2,000 of his own money. Still, Grady won by less than 1,000 votes.

“It’s just that you’re constantly being told, ‘You can’t, you can’t, you can’t do this,'” said Grady, who has now been promoted to chairman of the Senate Education Committee. “It’s like, why try it?”

Tennessee Sen. Charlane Oliver said she didn’t have many resources when she first put her hand up to run for political office. She will have to rely on grassroots activity and organizing to win the 2022 election.

Securing a seat, however, is only part of the battle. Oliver, a 41-year-old black Democratic woman, is often tasked with providing the only outside perspective to a Republican-supermajority Legislature.

“They don’t have any incentive to listen to me, but I think my seat is a distraction and gives you a perspective that you may not have heard before,” she said.

Since the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in 2022, many male-dominated state legislatures have enacted strict abortion bans in Republican-controlled states. For many female lawmakers, the trend means sharing deeply personal stories about abortion and childbirth.

In South Carolina, the abortion debate has led to an unlikely coalition of women coming together to block a near-total abortion ban. The five female senators — three Republicans, two Democrats and one independent — quickly became known as the “sister senators” as they took turns describing pregnancy complications, limited access to contraceptives and reproductive system risks.

Their actions were praised by national leaders, but the consequences were swift at home. Republican women have faced rebuke and the promise of primary challenges in this year’s elections.

Women also advocate for gun policy, education, health care and housing proposals.

Recently, some states have allowed candidates to include child care as an allowable expense for campaign finance purposes. Yang is a sponsor of the state law, which was one of her priorities when she attended the minority party’s first meeting at the Capitol.

During Young’s first term, she relied on a family member to care for her two young children while he was at the state Capitol. But last year, when the carer died unexpectedly days before the meeting, she was left unaddressed. Her husband, who works in television production, had to stay home and was without work for two months, which meant the family lost income.

Young’s bill won the vote of Luck, the first Hispanic woman elected to the West Virginia Senate. She also has to deal with the challenges of being a working mother. She quit her job as a teacher to homeschool her five children, and the family relied on her husband’s salary as a pediatric nurse to make ends meet.

“I ran for office because I felt like it was actually really important to have a voice like that — someone who was living paycheck to paycheck,” said Luck, a first-generation American who made the difficult decision to move her children away. “I’m not here because of the title, I’m not here because of the position, I’m here to do my job and I want to do it to the best of my ability.”