By ERIN BECK
Charleston Gazette-Mail
Governor-elect Jim Justice chose 23 men and four women to co-chair policy committees that will advise his incoming administration.
He will work with a Legislature made up of 116 men and 18 women — 18 is equal to about 13 percent, the lowest percentage of women in the Legislature since 1984.
The West Virginia Women’s Commission said if Justice appoints 50 percent women to the boards and commissions the governor is responsible for filling, he will take a step toward solving that problem, as well ensuring the people on the boards and commission better reflect the people they represent and the people their decisions affect.
Gov. Earl Ray Tomblin made 1,904 appointments, including 566 women — almost 30 percent — to boards and commissions as of Dec. 1, according to Jessica Tice, his spokeswoman.
They range from the West Virginia Women’s Commission and the Human Rights Commission to the Board of Coal Mine Health and Safety and the Blue Ribbon Commission on Highways.
Stacy North, chairwoman of the board for the Women’s Commission, said gender equity on boards and commissions would serve as a first, manageable step toward getting women more involved in higher levels of government.
“If we want to get women involved in public service, in the Legislature, in the House, in the Senate, in mayor’s races, on county commissions, we need to develop a system that gets women involved in the public arena,” she said.
North also suggests improving the status of women in West Virginia will require appointing and electing leaders who reflect their constituents.
The West Virginia Women’s Commission is made up of a volunteer board and one paid employee who offer suggestions to the Legislature and work on encouraging more women to run for office.
They prepare a report on improving the status of women in West Virginia each year and present it to the Legislature. The report is usually “taken with a grain of salt,” North noted.
According to the Institute for Women’s Policy Research, women in West Virginia ranked 48th for political participation, 51st for employment and earnings, and 49th for “poverty and opportunity” in 2015. The institute looked at multiple factors, including voting patterns, women in elected office, earnings and labor force participation, paid leave, elder and child care, women-owned businesses, and whether women had health insurance and a bachelor’s degree.
North said, through boards and commissions, women who traditionally haven’t been involved in government would likely be encouraged to run for office as their work helps them see more clearly the connections between daily life and government.
She also said by getting women involved in lower-level positions, they also might be more likely in the future to be appointed to higher-level positions as well. Maybe to positions like the policy chairs that advise the governor-elect, for instance.
“It gets you on the radar,” she said. “They usually pick the busy people — people who are already involved.”
North, who hopes for a meeting with Justice, wants to suggest he look outside of his usual circles for his picks.
“You need to diversify your outlook, and you do that by interacting with people who are outside of your world,” she said. “I think that probably, in today’s world, one of the biggest issues is that nobody looks outside of their own little neighborhood. They think everyone thinks like they think, and they have no reason to think otherwise.”
But Herring did not address whether Justice was amenable to the idea and did not respond to a direct question asking the governor-elect’s stance.
Iowa has required a “good faith” effort to achieve gender balance on state-level boards and commissions since 1987, and expanded the law to include local boards and commissions in 2009.
To prevent spots from being filled from the same old circles, the state requires standard protocols or application processes to determine qualifications.
Kelly Winfrey oversaw research at Iowa State University focusing on how many women were appointed to local and county boards and commissions after the law was expanded to include those boards and commissions in 2009. She said she noticed numerous women in the Iowa state Legislature got their start on boards and commissions.
“Boards and commissions are good starting points to get into politics, and it’s not a huge time commitment,” she said. “It’s a way for women to kind of get their feet wet.”
Winfrey, an assistant professor of journalism and coordinator of research and outreach for the Carrie Chapman Catt Center for Women and Politics, has seen a steady increase in women on boards and commissions, even though the state law only requires good faith efforts.
She is not, meanwhile, hearing women say they don’t want to get involved or seeing women aren’t qualified.
“When women are asked to apply for these boards, they wanted to,” she said.
In Poised to Run, a 2008 national survey of state legislatures, 53 percent of women representatives and 46 percent of women senators said they had not thought seriously about running until someone else suggested it, while 28 percent of men representatives and 26 percent of men senators expressed similar thoughts.
According to the same survey, 10 percent of women with pre-legislative experience got their start on a board or commission, while 26 percent served on a local or county school board. Eight states had similar laws as of 2013, according to the Carrie Chapman Catt Center.
“It’s not necessarily that women don’t want to serve,” Winfrey said. “It tends to be that they’re not encouraged to do so, and they underestimate their own qualifications.
“I think that gender balance legislation requires encouragement.”
The Iowa Commission on the Status of Women also doesn’t buy arguments women aren’t qualified or don’t want to be involved, noting women volunteer at higher rates than men in the state.
“First make sure you are not operating under unchallenged assumptions about the qualifications of women and men for certain positions,” it states in a guide for cities and counties. “One elected official reported he found it difficult to find women to serve on the Condemnation Board because he believed ‘not many women are farmers or Realtors.’ In actuality, women are the majority of Realtors in his community, and statewide, women are owners/operators or partners in 47% of Iowa’s agricultural land.”
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