Legislature lags in gender diversity despite century of women serving

Are women finally on the way to having the political voice we need and deserve in California? The record number of women running for office and the emergence of the #MeToo movement suggests a rising tide of political and cultural change.

While we all hope that is so, let me introduce you to Grace Dorris, Esto Broughton, Elizabeth Hughes and Anna Saylor, the first women elected to the California Legislature — in 1918.

These women — two teachers, a lawyer and a librarian — fought for and won major public policy changes, including providing public defenders to those who could not afford a lawyer, reforming community property law, funding rural schools and abolishing the death policy for minors. Yet in the ensuing six decades, only 10 women entered the Assembly and the first female state senator, Rose Ann Vuich, wasn’t elected until 1976.

Gender diversity is lacking in Sacramento, despite our state’s embrace of ethnic and cultural diversity. California’s Legislature has the fewest women since 1998 — occupying just 23 percent of the seats and lagging our neighboring states of Arizona (40 percent), Nevada (38.1 percent), Oregon (33.3 percent) and Washington (37.4 percent).

“If people think real change happens overnight, it doesn’t,” state Senate President Pro Tem Toni Atkins noted at an event marking the 100th anniversary of women in the Legislature, held last week by the Public Policy Institute of California. Elected unanimously by her peers, Atkins is the first woman to serve as the Senate president and the first person to serve as both Assembly speaker and Senate leader. She is a proud member of the LGBTQ community.

“Culture change starts with us,” she said. It takes root when we mentor each other. That’s difficult with so few women serving in Sacramento, where there are only nine women in the state Senate. “Nine women only go so far” when it comes to committee assignments, she said.

We need legislators to present and acknowledge the female perspective to develop public policy that serves all Californians. Atkins was raised by Pentecostal parents in southern Virginia, where she picked cotton and chopped tobacco. As an adult, she moved to then strongly Republican San Diego, where she entered politics as a Democrat. Her life experiences taught her to listen to others.

“If I want to have good relationships with the people in my life, I have to see different perspectives,” she said.

With so great a need for perspective, why has gender diversity in the Capitol stagnated? State Sen. Nancy Skinner, D-Berkeley, summed it up neatly: “Women don’t win political office because they aren’t always well funded. And they are not well funded for the same reasons they don’t receive the same pay, or get the same executive pay.”

Hope for a more equal world shines — but we all have work to do to arrive there.