The glass dome: women lawmakers have struggled to gain more than a quarter of all legislative seats.

• Author: Ziegler, Katie Fischer
• Position: LEGISLATORS

A woman will lead this organization over my dead body."

Shortly after the chairman of NCSL's nominating committee made this pronouncement at an annual meeting of the organization in Seattle, the Women's Network was born.

The year was 1985. Hairstyles, eyeglasses and shoulder pads were big. But the number of women in influential government positions was not. There were only three women leading foreign nations, 24 in Congress, two in governorships and 1,101 (14.8 percent) in all 50 state legislatures.

The chairman's words traveled quickly through the convention center. Many of the female lawmakers there had developed strong ties with one another through informal but regular lunches during NCSL meetings. After learning of the chairman's remark, the group decided it was time to act. They believed women needed to play a greater leadership role in the organization.

Louisiana's Mary Landrieu, a state representative then, announced the creation of the Network during the business meeting. "I rise on behalf of all fair-minded men and women today," she said. "We hold the leadership responsible for appointing people who will extend the opportunity for leadership in this organization to all."

The initial goals of this bipartisan group of women were to support and promote one another in leadership positions in NCSL and in their home states. They also agreed to promote some public policies they felt were too often ignored by their male colleagues, such as insurance coverage for mammograms, the availability of affordable child care and research into women's health.

Thirty years later the statistics for women in state legislatures are somewhat better. Women now comprise 24.3 percent of all legislative seats, and the number of women in major legislative leadership positions has grown from 12 in 1985 to 61 today. And, since 1985, when the chairman drew his line in the sand, seven women have led NCSL, including the current president, Nevada Senator Debbie Smith.

The increase in women lawmakers overall, however, has been slow. After jumping from 8.1 percent in 1975 to 20.5 percent in 1993, the share of female legislators has grown by less than 5 percentage points since then.

The importance of having women in leadership roles continues to be a high priority for the Network. "The decisions that get made by a speaker or a senate president really drive a lot of the process and how things end up," says Oregon Speaker Tina Kotek (D). "When you don't have a diverse set of individuals in those rooms, you're going to have a skewed perspective."

Run, Baby, Run

One reason women haven't approached parity is not that they can't win elections; it's that they simply are not running. When they do run, women are just as likely to win elections as men. So what's keeping women from throwing their hats into the state legislative ring? Three main factors, according to several studies, keep women from running for office:

* They lack political ambition.

* They need to be asked.

* They don't have well-developed fundraising networks.

A large, multi-year study by political scientists Jennifer Lawless from American University and Richard Fox from Loyola Marymount University examined potential candidates (lawyers, business owners and executives, educators and political activists) with equal levels of participation in public speaking, service on boards and political and policy work.

Across the board, men were significantly more likely than women to have considered running for office and to have an...