Commission’s gender balance shifts

Is there too much testosterone on the new Broward County Commission?

Some of the women who made up the former super-majority think so.

The days of female County Commission dominance, a phenomenon that lasted nearly two decades, is over. The recent elections solidified the trend. Now, there are only two women — Nan Rich and Barbara Sharief — on the board with seven men.

That’s a far cry from the days when Ilene Lieberman, Sue Gunzburger, Stacy Ritter, Kristin Jacobs, Diana Wasserman-Rubin and Lois Wexler ruled the dais.

Listening to their recollections, things were a bit different when there was a feminine bent.

For one thing, anyone who used the term “chairman” was quickly schooled about sexist terms. And when then-Commissioner Lori Parrish saw that female code enforcers were forced to wear men’s ties as part of their work uniforms, she balked.

“What if we made all the men wear scarves?” her then-colleague Kristin Jacobs (now a state representative) remembers her demanding.

And yes, there was crying on the dais from time to time. Parrish remembers tearing up when a tree preservation law that she sponsored didn’t pass. She said her tears prompted a male colleague to switch his vote.

A male majority took over the commission in November 2014.

That’s when Jacobs left for the state Legislature and Gunzburger departed because of term limits. Both were replaced by men.

The trend was magnified in 2016, when seats held by Ritter and Wexler were won by men. Ritter left to become county tourism president. Wexler was term-limited.

That brings us to today’s County Commission with a male super-majority.

Does it matter? The Broward County School Board has an all-female board, and no one’s made an issue out of it. But former county commissioners pointed to subtle ways women approached the job differently and also said they thought the commission should more accurately reflect the population it serves.

“I think all levels of government are much better when they reflect the diversity in the county and in the staff,” former Commissioner Lieberman said.

Women make up a little more than 51 percent of the Broward population, according to the U.S. Census 2015 estimates.

Lieberman, whose 1996 election kicked off the female domination of the board, said she sees it influencing the priorities of the commission.

“It seems to me that when we had a majority of females on the commission, the community was more focused on health and human services, poverty, gender equity, wage equity. Social issues,” she said.

That’s not to say the male commissioners won’t take up social causes, Lieberman said. In fact, some of them, including former state Sen. Steve Geller and Commissioner Beam Furr, have histories of doing so, she said. Still, she said she thinks “there should be a better balance of genders.”

Jacobs said she’s had it on her mind as she watched the scales tip.

“I’ve been thinking about that for awhile and wondering how that was going to shake itself out,” she said. “... We legislate differently, we problem solve differently, we fight differently, and there’s a place for that on the dais.”

The County Commission’s female dominance grew from a 4-3 majority to 5-4 when in 2000 the size of the board was expanded. By 2007, there were six women and three men.

Jacobs said she doesn’t see much difference in policy interests.

Commissioner Furr, for example, advances the causes she cares about, like the environment.

But she said women “need to be seen in those roles.” Men still don’t all know how to handle female decision-makers, she said, complaining of awkward, wimpy handshakes she got from county vendors.

Broward existed as a county for 59 years before the first woman, journalist Anne Kolb, was elected to the County Commission.