Republican women scarce in Utah’s Legislature, Dems have twice as many women as men
SALT LAKE CITY — The numbers don’t lie: Utah’s Legislature is mostly male, Mormon and Republican. However, in the 21st year of the 21st century, two Republican women advanced to high-ranking leadership slots: Lt. Gov. Deidre Henderson and Senate Majority Whip Ann Millner.
Henderson, who served almost two terms in the state Senate, vacated that slot last year when now Gov. Spencer Cox tapped her to be his running mate. And Millner recently nabbed the third-ranking spot in Republican Senate leadership.
But Henderson’s exit from the Senate left Millner as the lone remaining Republican woman serving in that body.
“I do miss working with her in the Senate,” Millner said Henderson. “But she’ll be great in that role.”
While the two women hail from different backgrounds, Millner said they share a common passion for service and the belief that their work makes a difference.
Henderson, from Spanish Fork, is married with five children. At 46, she completed almost two full senate terms and even unsuccessfully competed in her party’s 2017 convention to fill the early vacancy left by former Congressman Jason Chaffetz.
Millner grew up in Tennessee where she earned a BS degree in Education. Her master’s in Allied Health Education and Management came from Southwest Texas State University, and by 1982 she was working for Weber State University. In 1986, she got her doctorate in Educational Administration from Brigham Young University, also Henderson’s alma mater.
After holding several leadership positions at Weber State, Millner became Weber State University’s 11th president in 2002. And in 2014, she handily won Utah’s District 18 Senate seat. Since then, certain personal traits have served her well.
“I’m a collaborator, I listen to people and I’m open to hearing their ideas and different viewpoints and how they think through issues,” Millner said. “No one does this work alone. You need 15 votes in the Senate, 38 in the House, and the Governor on board in order to pass legislation.
However different their life experiences might be, neither woman takes their new leadership roles for granted.
“It’s pretty surreal, I’m still pinching myself,” Henderson said, musing on the path that led her there. In 2008, she hoped to get more involved in community service and politics, and a chance meeting with Jason Chaffetz started that ball rolling.
“I kind of met him on a fluke, and he was looking for volunteers,” Henderson said. “I decided to make phone calls for him. One thing led to another and I ended up being his political director.”
Those volunteer experiences laid a foundation for her political future, Henderson said, and in 2012 she won Utah’s District 7 Senate seat. But Henderson said she almost didn’t run because “it was a frightening thought.”
But a piece of advice she’d received in her freshman year at BYU stuck in her brain: Don’t take counsel from your fear.
So Henderson’s advice to other women considering a foray into politics is simple.
“If that’s something you want to do and you have the support of your family, do it,” she said. “Don’t let fear impede you, don’t let not knowing everything upfront impede you. You can figure things out as you go, you don’t have to know everything upfront.”
Millner offered similar encouragement, also suggesting ways women could prepare.
“We need to get more women involved. Get involved in your party, get involved in your legislative district, get involved in somebody’s campaign,” Millner said. “Get some experience, some background. In many cases, you have to get engaged before you run.”
Gender Imbalance
According to the Center for American Women in Politics at Rutgers, Utah ranks 40th out of 50 states for the percentage of women elected to state legislatures.
Surprisingly though — among Democrats, Utah’s elected women outnumber the men more than two to one.
Of the 29-member Senate, 22 are Republican men, one is a Republican woman, two are male Democrats and four are female Democrats. On the House side, 50 are Republican men, eight are Republican women, five are Democratic men and 12 are Democratic women.
“When I was one of two women with Sen. Millner, it dawned on me that there were more Republican men named Dan in the state Senate than there were Republican women,” Henderson quipped, noting the 3:2 ratio.
But when some in her party contend that gender doesn’t matter, Henderson disagrees.
“I’ve been trying in the last 12 years to push back against the prevalent notion in my party that it doesn’t matter if you’re a man or woman,” Henderson said. “While what you believe is important and your principles are important, it does matter that more voices are heard. Women’s perspectives are important, they matter and they’re largely missing.”
Millner also underscored the need for more women in elected office and leadership.
“Men and women have different life experiences, therefore we bring different viewpoints. And all those viewpoints are important,” Millner said. “We need more women to bring those experiences and viewpoints to the table. With more participation, there’s a louder voice.”
Derek Brown, chairman of the Utah Republican Party, praised the abilities that women have to connect with people and to be authentic.
And he’s also seen them wield significant influence when they landed in top leadership positions, having served a two-year legislative term during Becky Lockhart’s historic tenure as Utah’s first female speaker of the House.
“She was very good at helping legislators find their voice. She served as a mentor for many people, myself included,” Brown said. “She’d been there long enough to understand how the process worked.”
Brown acknowledged that his party has room for improvement when it comes to recruiting women.
“The Democrat party has done a better job (at that),” Brown said. “That’s one thing I’m committed to in this next cycle, working with female legislators to look for individuals who would be good legislators.”
And with women, he’s learned that the ask is very important.
“The job of the party is to look for women who would be good at it and then make that ask. As the party chair, that’s one of the things we’re working on,” Brown said.
Matthew Patterson, executive director of the Utah Democratic Party, said the organization enjoys a high level of female participation nationwide, in part because they believe in equal representation.
“We have a lot of women candidates who are willing to step up, who have become leaders in the party and the institutions they represent,” Patterson said.
But he and Brown see eye to eye on the all-important ask.
“You have to ask a woman to run multiple times before they’ll ever agree to run because they haven’t had that thought installed,” Patterson said. “My goal is to make sure women don’t have to be asked multiple times, that they know they can run for office and there’s no doubt that they’re good candidates to meet the task at hand.”
Wired differently?
Pat Jones, a former Democratic state representative and senator, launched the Women’s Leadership Institute in 2015 to encourage and train women of all political stripes to get in the game.
Utah’s culture tends to nudge women into certain roles, Jones said, and politics is not on that list.
“Men will wake up one morning, look in the mirror and go ‘I could be governor,’” she said. “But women tend to need to have someone tap them on the shoulder. And then they’ll do all kinds of research first. They’ll go talk to friends and family, they want to have all their ducks in a row before they even consider running for office.”
It turns out that neuroscience could actually be part of the gender diversity puzzle. Research has led Jones to believe that men and women’s brains inherently differ in subtle ways, but are designed to complement each other — in the home, in the workplace, and also in the halls of power.
“Women tend to think left to right — interconnected, and men tend to think front to back,” Jones said.
According to Science Daily, men have six times more grey brain matter while women have 10 times more white matter. Grey matter represents information processing centers in the brain, while white matter represents the networking or connections between those processing centers.
According to Jones, that explains the short fuse that men have with women in the board room.
“Women want to give the backstory first before they talk through it,” Jones said. “Men want to get to the point, solve it and move on to the next thing.”
Jones noted that there are reasons women tend to be deferential or don’t step up.
“But once they do, they have skills that are critical to positive outcomes,” she said.
She also encouraged women to expand their knowledge base by diving into the financial nitty-gritty.
“The smartest thing a woman can do as a legislator — or anywhere — is to understand how money is made and how it is spent. That’s really where the power is,” Jones said.
But change comes slowly to conservative states such as Utah, especially when conformity has been so highly valued.
“The challenge with men is that they’re feeling like they’re walking on eggshells all the time,” Jones said. “We want men to understand the value of gender diversity … not because it makes you look better, but it makes for better outcomes,” Jones said.
What year is this?
Jones recalled testifying in a House Revenue and Taxation Committee during the 2020 Legislative session on behalf of a childcare tax credit bill that came up for debate late one afternoon.
HB 187, sponsored by Rep. Suzanne Harrison, D-Draper, aimed to allow companies to defray childcare costs through tax credits. But the mostly male committee balked at the idea of that kind of government intervention.
Harrison had detailed Utah’s shortage in quality licensed childcare, a service that can cost parents up to $12,000 annually for an infant or $18,000 for an infant plus a four-year-old.
While the tax credits would in no way cover the whole cost, Harrison said they would provide a little economic “umph” to help small start-up companies retain good employees.
But her male colleagues on the committee focused more on Harrison’s “umph” — or energy as one described it — than the bill’s potential benefit. Man after man raised objections to the government overreach such a measure could usher in.
“Your umph is contagious, very contagious,” said Draper Republican Mark Strong. But he added that he struggles with the proper role of government. As the father of six children, Strong said he was fortunate enough to have a wife that chose to stay home — and he has a job that pays enough for that to take place.
Jones was present that day to speak on behalf of Harrison’s bill.
“I couldn’t believe my ears. It was 2020,” Jones said. “I knew that childcare was a huge problem even before COVID.”
With the pandemic, many women have had to leave jobs and careers they enjoyed — leaving a void in gender diversity in the workplace.
Harrison’s bill ultimately died in committee that day because members voted to adjourn without taking a vote.
“I could name numerous instances like that,” Jones said of the ongoing norm on Utah’s Capitol Hill. However, little will change when so few women get in on policy discussions.
During last year’s Legislative session, then Sen. Henderson joined all of her female Senate colleagues in staging a rare walkout during debate on a bill dealing with abortions.
Henderson, who describes herself as very pro-life, explained their bold action.
“It wasn’t so much an abortion bill but the government mandating a medical procedure. There were a lot of significant problems with that bill,” Henderson said. “Here is the prime example of perspective not being heard … a lot of my male colleagues didn’t understand what the bill could do and what it meant.”
Lessons learned
Now participating in her 21st year of lawmaking, Democratic Rep. Carol Spackman Moss shared her insights into Utah politics.
Moss, a long-time school teacher, was in her 50s when she took the leap, angry over her own male representative’s attitude toward teachers and public schools.
“He called (teachers) whiners when they went on strike,” she said. “I taught four of his eight kids … he was not supportive of public education but his kids got a wonderful education in public schools.”
At the encouragement of other Democrats, Moss put aside her doubts and agreed to run. And having taught thousands of students in her district, she already had name recognition in her favor.
“I could go up and down almost every street and know people in three-fourths of the houses. And it continues to this day,” she said.
Her teaching career provided Moss with a solid foundation in learning how to reach kids with different backgrounds and personalities. So handling her male Republican colleagues in the House seemed relatively easy in comparison.
So during last year’s session, when Rep. Phil Lyman of Blanding filed a resolution to censure U.S. Sen. Mitt Romney over his vote to impeach Pres. Donald Trump, Moss had no problem politely confronting him about it — especially since he sat just two seats away.
“I pointed out to Phil that Mitt Romney was my constituent. I told him I’d been getting so many phone calls from Republicans in my district, asking me to vote no on the bill to censure Mitt,” she said. The irony of that situation did not go unnoticed.
“Now I, Carol Moss, Democrat, have become Mitt’s defender,” she said with a laugh.
Lyman’s resolution amounted mostly to grandstanding, never advancing through the House or Senate.
This session, Moss expects to face fireworks on her bill about teaching consent in schools. She took it on after two women approached her about it, one who said she’d been raped at BYU.
“This is not about sex,” Moss said. “It’s about teaching kids in age-appropriate language how to protect themselves.”
With more than two decades in Utah’s House, Moss said she stays in the fray, not because of her own to-do list, but because her constituents have needs and she is willing to listen and do the necessary work.
And she encourages other women who are so inclined to step up.
“I was mentored and helped all along the way,” Moss said. “Don’t be afraid … women talk about education, health care, good jobs and safe communities. We need affordable daycare — even middle-class families now need two incomes. So if you genuinely like to interact and have those discussions, it comes across.”Cathy McKitrick is a freelance journalist in northern Utah.
