By Alan Greenblatt | Governing
(Editor’s note: Women comprise 31% of the Arizona Legislature.)
If Hillary Clinton and Carly Fiorina can run for president, why don’t more women run for state legislative seats? For about 20 years now, women have made up slightly less than a quarter of all state legislators.
“We’ve sort of been stuck somewhere between 22 and 24 percent, really since about 1997,” said Debbie Walsh, director of the Center for American Women in Politics at Rutgers University.
It’s been tough for women to keep up their numbers. Republicans have made enormous gains at the legislative level since 2010, but women tend more often to run as Democrats. Women make up about a third of Democratic legislators nationwide, but less than a fifth of Republicans. Of the 1,793 women currently serving as legislators right now, 60 percent are Democratic, Walsh said.
Related: How One Government Manager Plans to Get More Women in Power/Governing
