JACKSON, Miss. (AP) — Women represent half of the U.S. population but it's still rare for them to have leading roles in setting taxes or budgets in some states.
Take Mississippi, for example. Only one woman currently serves on the 14-member Joint Legislative Budget Committee. The elite group makes the first recommendations on how much money the state should spend on schools, prisons, Medicaid and other programs, giving these lawmakers substantial influence over their colleagues and over the lives of people who use government services.
Second-term Sen. Nicole Akins Boyd was appointed to the committee by Lt. Gov. Delbert Hosemann, a fellow Republican who said he did not consider whether to choose a balance of men and women.
“I don’t look at it so much like, ‘We need a woman here,’ or something like that," Hosemann said. "I look at the abilities and there are plenty of people that have great abilities, male and female. Nicole Boyd, I believe, is outstanding.”
Just over 2,400 women are serving in state legislatures across the U.S., or about 33% of the total, according to the Center for American Women and Politics, at Rutgers University. Almost 1,600 are Democrats, just over 800 are Republicans and the others are nonpartisan or independent.
Last year, when 31% of state lawmakers nationwide were women, they held about 30% of the seats on committees overseeing taxes, revenues and other financial matters, according to a review by The Associated Press.
But participation varies widely by state, and by session. In Utah, women held only 5% of those seats in 2024. This year, they hold 28%. In Nevada, 62% of finance-related seats were held by women when the Legislature last met in 2023.
Jean Sinzdak, associate director of The Center for American Women and Politics, notes that people who serve in legislatures for a long time tend to receive the most desired committee assignments.
“Anything budget- and appropriations-related is always one at the top,” Sinzdak said. “And so part of the challenge of getting more women is that women haven’t been serving as long and in the numbers needed.”
Women ‘add to the conversation’
Mississippi has the third-lowest percentage of women in its legislature, at 15%, according to the center. The only states behind it are South Carolina, with 13%, and West Virginia, with 11%.
All together, women hold just over 11% of seats on Mississippi’s five money committees: Joint Legislative Budget, House and Senate Appropriations, House Ways and Means and Senate Finance.
Mississippi has never had a woman as governor or House speaker. Only two women have been elected lieutenant governor, decades ago. All of those roles are crucial to setting taxes and budgets.
“Look, I want to see more women there because I think we add to the conversation,” Boyd said. “We work together differently, and I think those are all good things for the Legislature.”
For example, women in the Mississippi Legislature banded together in 2023 to secure money for evidence testing in rape cases when a backlog at the state crime lab was delaying trials.
“Our male colleagues supported us just as strongly,” Boyd said.
Money committees aren't the only way to serve
In West Virginia, Republican Delegate Kathie Hess Crouse said she believes women generally get the committee assignments they ask for. The low number of women on tax and budget committees is not only due to the fact that few serve in the legislature, but also because female lawmakers sometimes prioritize other committees, she said.
That’s the case for Hess Crouse, who chaired the House Committee on Workforce Development and served on other committees focusing on energy, manufacturing and government organization last year. She said legislative leadership has conversations with all the GOP lawmakers before the session starts and asks what their interests are. She always has received her top picks; it just so happens finance is not one of them.
“Do I like money? Yes,” Crouse said. “I do my home budget. I don’t necessarily like it, but I do it. I file my own taxes normally. I work on those things, but it’s not my main interest area. So do I want to serve on finance? No, I have interests elsewhere.”
Women are taking the lead in some states
The balance is different in Nevada, which in 2019 became the first state where a majority of legislators were women.
That is reflected on key committees. Women have most of the seats on the Assembly’s Revenue and Ways and Means committees. And they hold seven of eight seats on the Senate’s finance committee, including the entire Democratic delegation on the committee.
The chair, Sen. Marilyn Dondero Loop, said there could be areas, such as breast cancer funding, where female lawmakers might be more likely to put taxpayer money because of their personal connections to the issue. But she said she doesn’t approach her work thinking about gender.
“Whenever I vote and my other colleagues vote,” Dondero Loop said, “we do it solely as being a Nevadan and making things better.”
Elizabeth Steiner served as co-chair of the Oregon Legislature’s Ways and Means Committee, which handles money matters and has members from the House and Senate, before being elected state treasurer last year. She said it's important for women's personal and professional life experiences to be brought into state decision-making.
“If you don’t include 50% of the population, the perspective of 50% of the population in your decision-making, then you’re really disadvantaging everybody: men and women, and certainly children,” said Steiner, a Democrat.
Other states also have women in prominent roles. In Alaska, a Republican woman was one of three co-chairs of the House Finance Committee last year. Connecticut has two Democratic women leading the Appropriations Committee and another co-chairing the Finance Committee. Vermont had two Democratic women in charge of the Appropriations committees for 2023-24.
South Carolina has never had a woman chair a money committee. Three served on the 25-person House Ways and Means Committee in 2024. A Republican woman was rising in the 23-member Senate Finance Committee, but she took a stand against a total abortion ban and lost her primary along with the only two other Republican women in the South Carolina Senate.
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Associated Press reporters contributing to this report include Becky Bohrer in Juneau, Alaska; Jeffrey Collins in Columbia, South Carolina; Susan Haigh in Hartford, Connecticut; Leah Willingham in Charleston, West Virginia; Hannah Schoenbaum in Salt Lake City; Geoff Mulvihill in Cherry Hill, New Jersey; and Claire Rush in Portland, Oregon.
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