Twenty percent and climbing.

• Author: Thaemert, Rita
• Position: Women legislators - Includes sidebars

More and more women are being elected to the legislatures. That could mean changes not only in priority of the issues but also in the legislative process. Even though their numbers are still far from parity with men, women officeholders at most levels of government have increased with each election.

Since the 1970s, there has been a slow but steady gain in the number of women lawmakers, and the 1992 elections swept hundreds of women into elective office. Gains have been common at the federal level, but recently women forged ahead in state and local government elections.

More than 20 percent of the country's 7,424 state legislators are women, five times as many as in the 1960s. In Washington state, women hold 39.5 percent of the legislative seats, followed by Arizona with 35.5 percent and Colorado with 34 percent.

Candidates have capitalized on the subtle shift in attitude toward women as policymakers and political power brokers. A shift in general demographics shows that this generation identifies with and accepts women as accountants, doctors, engineers, lawyers and top executives. Elected women, in fact, often come to office with backgrounds and experience in business, education or law. Sue Lowden was a local TV anchorwoman for 10 years before being elected to the Nevada Senate. While serving as a representative in Oregon's part-time legislature, Sharon Wylie runs a consulting business. Georgia Representative Diane Harvey Johnson is president of a marketing firm. Senator Karen Gillmor of Ohio has been, among several other things, an educator, a health care administrator and a workers' compensation consultant. Senator Elsie Lacy of Colorado spent four years on the Aurora city council, serving three years as chair of the budget committee.

Women as Candidates

Alan Ehrenhalt, author of The United States of Ambition, says that "women campaign on different issues than men; women are more interested in children and family issues, and they are perceived by voters as being more compassionate." Senator Lowden used her opponent's propensity for tax increases to win decidedly over the 20-year incumbent male, who was a majority leader of the Nevada Senate. Representative Wylie's campaign in Oregon addressed changes in funding for schools and state health care programs. Representative Diana DeGette, who in her first term successfully sponsored Colorado's "bubble bill" (providing a safety zone around abortion clinics), thinks that women run for political office, driven by the need to advocate issues important to them--"for deeply held personal beliefs and altruistic reasons." And, she says, "This changes the way they look at the legislative process."

Ehrenhalt agrees. In Colorado, he says, recent laws that address child support, allow dental hygienists to practice without a dentist, and require breast cancer screening--were introduced and passed under pressure from women lawmakers. Pushing Special Issues

"Women are the initiators in the legislature," says Alan Rosenthal, former director of the Eagleton Institute of Politics at Rutgers University. They push for the issues important to them such as more support for and reform of education and services for the elderly, he says.

A study by the Center for American Women and Politics concluded that more women legislators could mean a higher priority will be given to issues such as abortion, child care and child support, domestic violence, education, the environment, equal pay, guaranteed health care, housing and sexual harassment. "Women are more active on women's rights legislation and more likely to target public policies that affect children and families," says Susan J. Carroll, co-author of the study report Reshaping the Agenda: Women in State Legislatures. Ehrenhalt concurs. Women lawmakers approach the political process "by using government as a vehicle to solve social problems," and the influx of women in legislatures means that social policies will become more important, he says.

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