Legislators

and right,” Miller said. “We’ll continue to work on it as a body.”

Currently, the highest-ranking woman in the Georgia Legislature is state Rep. Jan Jones, R-Milton, who in 2010 made history when she was tapped as House speaker pro tem, the chamber’s No. 2 position.

“I’m not about identity politics, but I will say the public does want to see folks who they identify with on many different levels, whether it’s geographic, age, background,” said Jones. “Gender certainly is one of them — you don’t want to deny that.”

“I encourage Republicans to own what they are on every level,” she added.

Among the House’s 41 committees, women chair only six. In the Senate, they lead four of 29. No woman, Democrat or Republican, has ever led the Legislature’s most influential panels: Appropriations, Rules and Ways and Means.

‘Not even in the ballpark’

Some of the lack of women in leadership roles comes down to longevity, said former state Rep. Jane Kidd. Many women legislators don’t serve as long as their male counterparts, she said.

“If women do a couple of terms and choose to do something else, it’s probably because they didn’t feel like they were getting a lot done and making a lot of progress,” said Kidd, who lost a run for the state Senate after serving one term in the House in the mid-2000s.

Others have offered more pointed criticism. Unterman last year excoriated leaders of her own party for sexism after she was ousted as head of the chamber’s health panel.

“Ladies of the Senate,” she said, “we’re not even in the ballpark. We’re outside looking over a fence, and we’re trying to look into the ballfield to see who is playing.”

Unterman eventually mended fences and was given a lesser committee. In an interview this spring, she insisted she felt valued by her colleagues and that she has been given opportunities to advance over the years.

“People eventually recognize your leadership skills, no matter if you’re a man or woman,” she said.

Still, the General Assembly has been criticized for its slow responses to problems that primarily affect women. It took years, for example, to address the state’s stubbornly high maternal mortality rate.

And, at times, lawmakers have seemed out of sync with women in the general public. In the wake of the #MeToo movement, state senators moved to limit the window for filing sexual harassment complaints against legislators when there had previously been no time limit.

And then, there are optics. Female lawmakers largely voted along party lines on last year’s “heartbeat” legislation, which outlaws most abortions once a doctor can detect a fetus’ “heartbeat.” But a much-circulated photograph depicted nearly three dozen smiling male lawmakers surrounding Unterman, the only Senate woman to support the measure.

For their part, Republican leaders in the Legislature say they will continue work to increase the ranks of women through active candidate recruitment and instituting family friendly policies.

Some noted the actions House leaders took last session to expand paid parental leave and extend Medicaid funding for low-income mothers as evidence of leaders taking women and their votes seriously. The paid leave proposal died on the last day of the legislative session, while Gov. Brian Kemp signed the maternal mortality legislation last month.

Several female legislators interviewed said they think it’s only a matter of time before women catch up — they point to record levels of female candidates. And there’s the rise of Jones and U.S. Sen. Kelly Loeffler for the GOP, as well as former House Minority Leader Stacey Abrams, who ran for governor and was a

‘You should have seen how grown men were squirming. Things were changing in real time, and some were not prepared for that.’

Democratic state representative